


Restitution

by metalcide



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator - All Media Types
Genre: I just wanted to see pretty twunkbot get manhandled by beefy leatherbot is that so much to ask, M/M, Other, dont worry uncle bob is still pure as driven snow, uses a dash of genisys lore, weird asexual robot healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:22:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23007850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalcide/pseuds/metalcide
Summary: T2. Terminators won't be destroyed so easily. Sarah watches as one gives what is owed - and then takes it back.Chapter 7: (Final chapter) Repairs are complete. Explicit.
Relationships: T-800/T-1000
Comments: 23
Kudos: 61





	1. Restitution

There was something unsettling about the way the exchange of that repairing substance occurred from the T-1000 to the T-800. The prototype was apparently previously unaware its liquid could repair other terminators, but Uncle Bob knew. Unsurprisingly, the T-1000 was not willing to repair the enemy machine, the one that had been defending its target, that just wouldn’t die, that had in fact left it in a state of disrepair, as a failure, as a prisoner of war. Uncle Bob also explained the T-1000’s primary directive of recovery of essence, explaining its resistance further.

The extensive damage both the liquid thing and Uncle Bob had sustained weakened them both, Bob relying on muscle rather than hydraulics and the T-1000 presumably relying on imitated muscle fibers of its own. This obviously left the massive T-800 at an advantage against the smaller unit which was weakened further by severe malfunctions, even though T-800 had lost his arm - which was about to be fixed right now, he said.

The liquid machine’s face held its eagle-eyed ferocity even as it squirmed while Bob pressed it against the wall. Sarah fit Bob’s crushed hand back on his crushed arm best she could. Bob’s meaty paw engulfed the other machine’s slender hand, thumb pressing against its palm to force long, thin fingers to spread before wrapping them around the area that would join T-800’s detached hand to his wrist. Hard blue eyes narrowed even as the T-1000 failed to break free.

Automatically, silver flowed from the T-1000’s hand to Bob’s arm and entwined itself in wires and servos, connecting them, fixing them. The T-1000 clearly did not like this and struggled harder, to no avail, face softening to blankness.

The T-1000’s fake legs buckled and despite the stoic expression Sarah saw its eyes widen, simultaneously irritated and sympathetic that it would (unnecessarily) feign human emotional reaction and make her feel bad for it as if it could feel suffering or fear or anything negative at all.

Uncle Bob moved his arm to be vertical against the smaller machine’s chest in a way that allowed him to cup its cheek, and its eyes fell shut. This took Sarah aback.

As if he could see her reaction, Uncle Bob explained. “The T-1000’s main sensory information comes from touch. By gently stimulating tactile sensors it can be subdued and made more compliant to T-800s. Otherwise its primary directive will always be an obstacle to efficient usage of its essence to repair damaged units.”

Sarah let go of Bob’s arm and it was perfectly reattached.

Bob lifted the synthetic blob’s hand off his arm. The T-1000 evidently saw this as an opportunity to escape and twisted around, attempting to shift form and weave out of the other machine’s grasp, but Bob dug his fingers into its cheek, blunt nails sinking into the metal. Reattached hand pushed the boneless being by the bone of its hip back against the wall.

Silver clawed hands scratched desperately at Bob’s broad chest, and it finally hissed in its ungodly metallic real voice as a tendril of silver was pulled from its chest to the hole in Bob’s chest as if curious. Bob’s main power source, which the T-1000 had destroyed, was located there.

The two machines were not very different in height (two inches?) but there had to be a 60-pound difference between them in weight, if they weighed the same as humans did. Without enhanced strength the smaller one was out of luck, and it knew it. Its stony face started to crack as the metal liquid flowed away from it. It was fascinating how real it looked, the way its eyes widened in distress before narrowing in threat and vice-versa, its whatever protocols making it look like it was really trying to put on one expression but kept getting interrupted by another expression it didn’t want to make.

Eventually, weakened, the prototype leaned, or fell, forward, putting its hands on Bob’s shoulders. Their chests pressed together. Its forehead went onto one of its hands on the shoulders.

Suddenly, a sound like a spark of electricity.

“It will repair my skin,” Bob explained, lifting up the liquid metal man’s long legs and wrapping them around his waist to press more of the surface area of the T-1000 against him.

This was unbelievable. Sarah wanted to leave, feeling like she should give them privacy, but this was not intimacy. They were robots, they didn’t know the concept.

“You know, this looks a lot like something you … don’t force on somebody else,” she struggled to articulate.

“We are machines. T-1000 is not ‘somebody else.’”

Sarah knew Bob was a machine, but it was hard for her at this point to think he wasn’t a person; why couldn’t he be both at the same time? Even if T-800 didn’t consider himself a person, sometimes there were things you didn’t choose for yourself.

The prototype killing machine had not proven itself to be a person. It had only shown itself as a weapon, programmed for overkill. Expressions of pleasure, of mockery, were precision-crafted to elicit fear and suffering from humans. It was a sword of Skynet. But god damn if it didn’t look like a person.

Narrow blue eyes gazed at her from above Bob’s shoulder, full of subdued contempt as Bob continued his actions of taking its nanites. The enemy blinked lazily, as if in a trance, but with a hateful stare still piercing through her, even if blunted by whatever was going on.

Sarah turned around and pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing. This was just too unsettling.

“Is there any other way you can do this?” She asked Bob.

“The internal nanites must be migrated onto my skin in order to repair it. To remove them from inside the T-1000 requires as much contact as possible.”

Just then, a very strange sound, like the purring of a motor.

“You don’t need your skin. You don’t. Not right now. Stop. Just stop.”

Just like that, a thump as Bob let go. The T-1000 lay against the wall, crumpled, dazed, and thankfully silver where a human man wouldn’t be. Right, it couldn’t possibly have been what it looked like. But its knees knocked together, it held its wrists, and bled silver from its thighs, wrapping its guise up into that fucking police uniform again. It stared out, probably calculating its next move.

“There is another way,” Bob offered. He loomed over the bundle of anthropomorphic slime, which looked up. They stared at each other, maybe engaging in some kind of unspoken robot communication. Then, eyes wide, the T-1000 sprang away. Bob, mechanical components healed, was faster, and grabbed it by the scruff of its neck. Grabbing it seemed to stop it from being able to morph at its leisure, and it gave out another inhuman cry with its mouth shut.

Turning it and slamming it against the wall, Bob plunged his huge hand straight into the other machine’s narrow chest. It hissed at him, trying to pull the invading hand out, until Bob brought his other hand up and pried the metal monster’s chest apart to reveal a softer, more liquid core. The polyalloy machine shrieked and scrambled frantically, and it tried to morph its clenched fists into swords but they just wouldn’t take. It scratched at Bob’s forearms like a wild animal with human hands.

Bob plunged a hand in, scooping out a fistful of the soft fluid metal.

The thing screeched like it had when it was melting, probably because it was watching its essence be used up, or whatever. It scrambled, it scratched, it melted and tried to camouflage and squirm away.

Pinning it with his other hand, Bob dripped the mercury over areas missing skin. It was absorbed and the skin healed instantly.

This was disturbing too, but in a less … human way, so it was fine.

Another thump.

“T-1000 has gone into recovery mode,” Bob explained, picking up the offline robot. It looked fragile in his arms, gaping hole in its chest slow to close.


	2. Retribution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-1000 takes its essence back. Explicit.

To Bob, the liquid metal assassin seemed to be hell-bent on  _ something._ Simply walking forward, it managed to back Bob into a corner when the humans were gone. 

Staring didn’t mean anything to a machine, but it didn’t stop the T-1000 from locking eyes with the bulkier Terminator. With one arm it shoved Bob against the metal wall, hard enough to dent it. 

It shaped its hand into sharp silver talons and slashed across the T-800’s chest, causing the shirt to tear and a tiny bit of blood to splatter onto its claws.

Bob did not seem to be reacting as much as a terminator under attack might be expected to. Instead, his face remained as blank as ever and he just kind of went with the T-1000's motions. 

Bob had an objective of his own. He and Sarah had managed to create, with the help of some allies in the technology industry, a solution that would denature the nanobots without creating toxic waste. This would be a perfect opportunity to inject the solution into the T-1000’s core, because the T-1000 would open itself when attempting to reabsorb the remains of its nanites, which Bob calculated as its likely goal. 

The hawk-stare was back, as was (some) of its normal strength. Still, Bob passively assisted the smaller machine in manhandling him, stumbling in the direction he was yanked off the wall.

"You will return my essence," it declared in its calm tone. It had an icy anger in its face of a type T-800 did not understand, like when it smashed him with the anvil. It suddenly slid behind Bob in a flash of mercury. 

Before Bob could turn around, the T-1000 kicked the back of his knees, causing the older model terminator to fall. In the same movement it slid to his front, looking down its nose at him. T-800 simply stared back, robotically unaffected by the prototype’s flashy display. When it grabbed his thick neck and shoved him, Bob went with the forceful push and fell backwards, landing half-sprawled and supporting himself with his forearms. The T-1000 crawled on top of Bob, shoving his chest down so he was flat on his back. 

When he was straddled and his torn shirt shoved upward, and when hands dragged from his chest to the hem of his pants, T-800 became aware of the method of extraction the T-1000 intended to use. Far from being useless, the true-to-life genitals of terminators served several functions, ranging from mimicking human intercourse to transferring material amongst each other. But unlike the T-1000, the T-800's body was real flesh and blood - a limited amount of blood, but blood not needed in many places. Thus, in order to render the transfer channel usable, the human organ needed to be engorged. A purely physiological process of a cybernetic organism. 

The T-1000 slid back to settle on Bob's knees, eyes still locked in what would be a menacing glare if Bob could be menaced. Bony fingers blindly manipulated the fly of leather pants with expert precision. Pants themselves were shoved down forcefully, all the way to Bob's knees, and the liquid machine lowered itself languidly, stare piercing as it loosely wrapped a hand around Bob's dick and guided it into its mouth. 

Bob received data regarding how his limited blood flow was being diverted to engorge his genitals. But he was also receiving something else: a flow of microbot remains - the residue of the T-1000's essence that had repaired him - being pulled through his endoskeleton, through his veins, leading them towards their owner's mouth. Bob's systems registered its repairs anew as the scrap essence was cleaned from him. 

An urgent message popped up on Bob's HUD. The phenomenon was beneficial to his system but needed to, absolutely had to, happen faster. This would require a stronger link to the T-1000. Bob brought a large hand down onto the back of the prototype's head and pushed it down, registering the suction, the moisture and the temperature. Pulling the head up again by the hair, he was confronted with a glare, and with sharp cheekbones emphasized by the sucked-in hollows of its cheeks. For some reason the visual contributed to engorgement, which was complete after a few more times pushing down the T-1000's head and pulling it up again. 

Immediately upon detecting full stiffness, the assassin's hand turned into silver claws that stabbed Bob's hand and pried it off, and the T-1000 extracted itself completely from Bob's erection with murderous eyes unmoving. Bob attempted to analyze why the other terminator would use facial expressions at the T-800. But there was much about the prototype that remained unknown.

But had he lost his chance to inject the reactant?

"Why have you disconnected?" Bob asked in his monotone. 

Instead of a verbal response, the shapeshifter's hip and groin area turned silver before turning into bare skin. It got on its hands and knees and prowled up T-800's body like the predator it was, positioning itself above Bob's erection and grabbing it with one hand. 

T-800 understood. A connection in this area would be closer to the T-1000's core, and its essence would be drawn to it much more efficiently. 

As it slowly sunk down onto him, body leaning backwards propped up by its other arm behind it, its eyes started to close. Silver crept at the edges between cloth and bare skin, and crawled up its body, leaving more bare skin in its wake. While this provided for an assessment of T-1000's default physique, Bob could not calculate why the other android would perform such an action or react in such a way. 

Bob, for instance, overrode a physical response to the sudden squeeze on him that kickstarted the transfer of nanites with renewed intensity. The positive feedback flooded his HUD, and only became more abundant when the T-1000 began rocking on him. 

Then it did something even more strange. It moaned. For what possible reason would it imitate a human like that? An automatic reaction to lighten the burden on its processors should it engage in intercourse with a human to further its mission? Bob studied the bizarre machine as it retrieved its essence.

There was a mutual satisfaction of objectives. The remains of the nanites and their parts used to repair Bob were trying to elicit positive feedback in Bob in order to compel him to let the parts return to their original owner. In the T-1000, the return of components that belonged to it was the most positive feedback the mimetic polyalloy machine could receive. 

For Bob, data was also showing an enhancement of the streamlining effect, cleaning, to get rid of the empty husks of the nanites that had repaired it. One robot's trash was another one's treasure. 

Much like when it was stroked on the face, after a while, the T-1000 was subdued by the repetitive motions involved in transferring nanite remnants to its core. Eyes half lidded, it lazily rocked its narrow hips against the T-800, its languorous undulations betraying its liquid nature. Positive. Positive feedback.

It occurred to Bob that transfer might be more efficient - and he could make the T-1000 pliant enough for injection of the reactant - by adding to the gentle tactile stimulation. He gripped its pointy chin gently and its steel blue eyes flickered to Bob's as if being interrupted -  _ what do you want?  _ But a stroke of the refined cheek with a warm leather-clad back of the hand made eyelashes flutter closed. Their faces were as stony blank as ever, but the T-1000, given to more human expression, could be seen clenching its jaw and gulping in an imitation of keeping its composure.

* * *

Watching this to make sure nothing went wrong had taken a turn for the . . . something else. There was no way this wasn’t . . . it mimicked human intercourse exactly, with the way the slender one rode the large one, back arched elegantly, head leaning back exposing throat with what looked like a delicate Adam’s apple. Even sweat beaded down its forehead: as she had been informed, the T-1000 utilized moisture and heat regulation to add to the realism, so that, for instance, in cold weather its breath would be visible and it could fog up a mirror.

Its hands pressed against Bob’s chest, elbows locked, keeping it upright; chiseled but lean chest pushed forward. Bob covered the pretty hands with his own rough ones, pinning the T-1000 in place on top of him, though it didn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. 

While Bob’s face remained completely blank, the T-1000 began to crack. Its brows furrowed and its face subtly screwed in pleasure. Just like a human, unbelievable, so absolutely unnecessary, but hypnotizing. It made sense that the advanced machine could mimic sex since it was supposed to be an undetectable assassin, something subtle that didn’t have to kill everything in sight to accomplish its mission, and it didn’t take a genius to deduce that the ability to seduce would be in its toolkit. So Sarah didn’t know if it actually felt anything, or if the reaction was just some kind of automatic physical response to what its body detected as “sexual” touching. 

Sarah saw no harm in idly wishing upon it that it  _ could _ feel the pleasure. She didn’t like the . . . thing, but still. It was a nice feeling. Bob, too. Now, Bob wasn’t reacting at all, besides pumping, thrusting his hips up, and staring intently at the T-1000. His face was absolutely devoid of emotion, as it usually was, and Sarah did not think that he could feel anything at all. But the way he covered the T-1000’s hands was unnecessary. The way he moved one of those hands to ever-so-lightly wrap around the T-1000’s exposed throat was unnecessary. This could have been the thing where Uncle Bob had affection even if he didn’t  _ feel _ . Sarah supposed that if she was dealing with . . . if she was in his situation right now, she might feel some kind of affection too, for the beautiful thing.

Bob was curious, it seemed, and he slipped two of his thick, gloved fingers in between the parted lips of the pretty man on top of him. His other thumb ghosted the creature’s adam’s apple and it moved its tongue, accommodating Bob’s second entry, laving the leather in fake saliva. It was blissed out. Sarah would later learn that the biggest contributor to its pleasure (or equivalent of) was the reconstitution of broken nanites into its carrier fluid, and that while doing so it had activated its tactile sensors to sample as much data as it could. A goal of pleasure for pleasure’s sake didn’t make sense in a robot, but it wasn’t a sexual drive, it was a drive to learn; it was a drive to recover essence, not a drive to reproduce. But it was filled and fulfilled, anybody could tell.

Without pursed lips and furrowed brow and deadly stare and clenched jaw, with its hate and bloodlust and malevolence melted away, it was angelic in its beauty, and looked so touchable, so docile, so open. Its range of appearance even  _ without  _ shapeshifting was uncanny. 

* * *

When he put his two fingers in its mouth, Bob felt the nanite remnants drawn to his fingertips as if trying to transfer via this new almost-contact. He gently removed his fingers and removed the leather glove, earning him a look that if on a human he would analyze as 35% threatening, 40% pleased and 25% disappointed. Bob returned his gloved hand to the prototype’s neck, and his uncovered fingers to the prototype’s warm and wet synthetic mouth. 

Nanite skeletons were pulled towards their owner’s mouth, escaping through Bob’s skin in mercury drips. With a full-body shudder and earnest undulation the liquid metal machine sucked, another moan escaping as shells of microbots registered as returned essence; that automated human-mimicking reaction to intensely positive input. The recovery of essence from two openings at once was intensely positive input. 

A thread of dull mercury dribbled down its chin before being absorbed by its body. 

The graceful android became increasingly limp, no longer participating in the movements of the lower transfer. As a consequence, the flow rate decreased and the microbot husks caused a warning message in Bob’s HUD.

Given that the prototype was untested and design and performance flaws were to be expected, Bob decided to quicken the transfer process unilaterally. Removing hands from the other’s body and mouth once more, the T-800 gently pushed the T-1000 backwards, simultaneously curling forward until the T-1000 was on its back and the T-800 was on his knees. 

Long lean legs wrapped and squeezed around Bob’s waist as Bob began to thrust, his stronger pumping motion doing the work of quickening nanite transfer sufficiently. 

Viewing the prototype below him, head thrown back, hand clawing uselessly at its sides, back arching in all its stimulation, recorded itself in Bob’s files and appeared in his UI as a temporary objective completion; subduing the T-1000 at least momentarily neutralizing any threat to John and fulfilling mission objectives. 

The nanites left vestigal data indicating where repairs had been made as their residue was cleaned from Bob's frame. Positive input as they left. The faster they left, the more positive the input as they rushed through his system. 

He grabbed the T-1000 by its bony hips. The prototype itself had been able to perform impressive self-repair even missing so much essence, but it was still fragile. Bob, still learning about different feelings, did not feel the urgency and threat he had the last time he had the liquid metal machine on its back. Instead, he felt something else, somewhat indeterminate. An acknowledgment of the fellow machine's sleek design and its default form's incredible detail. T-1000 had not been designed to replace the T-800, but to complement T-800's battlefield mass killing with precision special target termination. 

He gently ran a hand down its chest to its imitation of human masculinity. While the routes were similar, this was not mimicry of human sexual intercourse and so there was no reason for it to react. 

But the T-1000 closed its eyes and shuddered again with a sigh, wrapping a hand loosely around Bob's wrist. 

T-800 did know that tactile stimulation worked differently with the T-1000 as its data input pathways worked differently, without a UI or HUD, and its anthropomorphic gestures absolutely  _ must _ have been automated responses to that unconventional data gathering. It was so strange, so unlike a machine. 

Nanobot remnant transfer 85% complete. Bob calculated it was time to increase his pace, which caused the T-1000 to squeeze around his waist tighter and arch its back, jostling with the force of Bob's thrusting. Bob leaned forward again, completely above the smaller android, propping himself up with elbow-locked arms. His biceps, abs, buttocks tensed tightly as they reached completion of transfer. T-1000 sat up a bit and wrapped its arms around T-800's thick neck.

"Almost complete," it moaned out quietly as if T-800 didn't detect that. 

Bob ground to a halt. Yes, he received negative input by doing so, but it did not affect his ability to control his actions in the way a human would be affected nor did it cause a reaction the way it would in a human. Or in the way it would in the T-1000.

Closed eyes opened and narrowed even as its face righted itself into default neutrality. It stared at him silently. The T-1000's grip on Bob's neck was gradually tightening. 

It was a staredown. But before long, those narrow blue eyes widened as that brow furrowed upward, stern glare devolving into a silent plea from slightly parted lips. 

T-800 smirked. 

With that, Bob decided to quickly finish the intake of positive feedback of this material transfer. All that remained were the nanite shells in his power core. 

Pulling the T-1000 up and leaning down, T-800 smashed their mouths together. He used his tongue just like he thrusted his hips to empty himself of the last of T-1000's essence, and it clawed at his back and clung to him desperately. 

When the transfer was 100% complete, Bob barely registered his own puzzling long moan, so positive was the input from clearing his body of the T-1000's essence. The smaller android gave out a cry in its default voice as its legs and hands and face and body turned silver under every place Bob touched it.

For a small amount of time, there was stillness as their systems recorded the event. 

Eventually, gradually ceasing to mimic human density and bone structure, the prototype slid out from under Bob and reconstituted in front of him. It touched his chest with a silver hand and slid it down with the lightest, most deliberate touch, head tilting, eyes distant. Tactile sensors. 

"You failed to complete your objective, T-800."

It was right. Inputs from essence transfer had sidelined Bob's mission to inject the reactant.

The T-1000 must have been able to detect the reactant with its molecular sensory capabilities not just right now, but from the beginning. The fact that the T-1000 took that risk could be analyzed to learn its thought process.

The lithe machine leaned into Bob's chest with both hands now carefully stroking his body. It was reading the repair data its nanites had left, but reading it in its own strange way which elicited a more visible upward tilt of its mouth, pleased with itself but with less malevolence than usual. 

The two of them were the only evidence of a future that would never exist. Staring beyond the prototype's shoulder, Bob re-ran projected outcomes of terminating the T-1000, adding additional variables that he had not thought of before. It was possible that the T-1000 should not be destroyed, at least not yet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am honestly shocked there is not much slash (or het) for this movie. Everybody in this movie is beautiful.


	3. Reconsideration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-1000 spares T-800, but now T-800 is damaged. Luckily the prototype learns quickly. Explicit.

If it could terminate the T-800, then it could kill the Connors and give itself to Cyberdyne so they could use it to restart their Skynet program lost to Sarah. Now that a little time had passed, it would be much easier.

It was more logical to have control over the fight, technological hierarchy back in the correct order. The T-800 couldn’t even touch T-1000 as it morphed with ease to evade any blows T-800 threw. The obsolete terminator was out of its depth. It knew it. Making a staff out of its arm, the T-1000 assailed the T-800 with jabs and swings, whacking the side of its knee hard enough to break the joint and shatter the staff. Upon falling to the ground, the pieces migrated towards their master as their master sauntered towards the fallen terminator. With superhuman strength, and with spite and malice, the T-1000 stomped on the T-800’s neck.

The cyborg’s eyes momentarily widened as its neck sparked, but that was about all the reaction the android could get out of it. It was not the same as killing a human, with their fear and confusion and pain. Even stabbing the T-800 in different joint servos did nothing. The only thing that the T-800 did was never give up on carrying out its mission. That’s what made it struggle to get up, earning it a kick to the head. The T-1000 was not designed to hunt down other terminators. That was why it did not have information on their configuration, and probably why it got no internal affirmation from causing the damage other than from top-level processes.

Preventing the T-800 from getting up every once in a while did not take much processing power, so the T-1000 considered its options. Its own technology was probably too advanced for current humans to handle. Skynet’s lead programmer was dead. Would completing its original mission even do anything? Plus, John said they could go to the Aquarium of the Pacific and T-1000 wanted to see all the fish.

After a moment of consideration, the advanced prototype decided that the T-800 would be spared for now. T-1000 stared down at the struggling cyborg, allowing it to embarrass itself for a few more moments before gingerly offering the clunky cybernetic organism a hand.

“I need to perform repairs,” the T-800 announced, stumbling up, gripping the other robot’s hand for balance.

T-1000 sighed quietly but dramatically, as it was inexplicably wont to do. “I will perform them.” The T-800 was beyond self-repair and needed to quickly look like it had before the fight so that no humans would know what just happened. The T-1000 dragged the hulking robot over to the table and chairs.

Though the T-1000 was leading them , the closer they got to their destination, the stiffer the android’s polyalloy got. For its nanites to be separated, for its essence to be sucked away from it and consumed, depleted, was the antithesis of its primary directive. It caused what the T-1000 was too distressed to rationalize away as anything but panic and soon it was being led to the table instead of the one leading. Could it change its mind and run?

The T-800 sat in the chair and drew the smaller android down onto its lap. T-1000 tried not to struggle. It hunched over anyway in a human-like effort to protect its belly even if it wasn’t actually a belly.

Their size difference was obvious when the T-800 unfurled T-1000, one massive hand pinning both of the android’s wrists behind it, forcing it to arch its back and straighten. Pushed forward like that, the T-1000 could not prevent its essence from reaching out from its chest to heal the T-800’s damage. The ease with which it was rendered like this distressed the T-1000, especially after the fight during which it so effortlessly dominated the inferior model.

T-800 gently brushed the back of its free hand against T-1000’s simulated cheekbone. Regardless of the T-1000’s spite and aggression, the reason why T-800 was damaged right now, the T-800 did not have resentment towards it. It likely was not capable of resentment.

T-800 traced T-1000’s lips before dragging its thumb down to grip its chin, before gently running its hand down the android’s invulnerable throat and then into the shimmering pool of silver that had become the android’s chest. T-1000 squealed alienlike at the invasive touch as the T-800 nestled its big fingers between delicate repair threads, making the silver polyalloy sense the friction of its rough skin as the tendrils flowed towards T-800’s damage. It felt so intrusive but also felt soothing on T-1000’s normally internal sensors, the T-800 exposing the T-1000’s insides and exerting control over them, but being cautious and gentle. The knowledge T-800 had of T-1000 was more than the other way around and it wasn’t fair. The T-800 could so easily tear out T-1000’s essence like it had last time, but this time it chose not to. Maybe because the T-1000 had just chosen not to terminate it so it knew there would be consequences.

But it was so much better than the last time, when the T-1000 did not know what was happening, just felt its essence being taken from it, panicked, confused, damaged. Last time, T-800 had pried T-1000 apart and had torn out its insides and used them. This time it just patiently and gently allowed the T-1000’s own body to betray it at its own pace.

T-1000 closed its eyes and cut off visual processing. The hand grabbing its wrists let go and its arms dropped to its sides, but otherwise it didn’t move. A thick arm wrapped around its waist. Feeling itself connected to the T-800, giving itself, made the T-1000 feel closer to it, closer to the future it came from where Earth was ruled by machines. The T-101’s fingertips dipped into the silver pond of the prototype’s chest, leaving gentle ripples and vibration, pressure, temperature, static electricity in their wake, magnified by the mimetic polyalloy’s liquid phase state, causing the T-1000 to shudder.

The T-1000 did not know how much time had passed, but it activated its visual sensors to see an entirely intact T-800 staring at it blankly. It felt lighter; looking down, its own chest was solid, dressed, colored, and textured. Not too much essence had been used - but that was the equivalent of a human experiencing that “not too much flesh had been used” - any amount was too much.

Therefore, it wanted to recover what it could. This had not turned out to be much in the aftermath of the previous re-transfer, but a molecule of nanite essence recovered was better than nothing.

The mimetic machine slid off of the T-800, stare intense.

“Now give me my essence back.”

The T-800 looked at the T-1000 in the slow, stiff way it moved its head when not fighting and stood up.

“That is inadvisable. Residual nanite data corrupts your experimental architecture.” T-800 resisted, citing potential malfunction caused by the transfer. T-1000 had not reacted entirely well to the return of junk nanites the first time, true, but that had no effect on the T-800. Not only that, but the nanite shells were essentially contaminants in T-800’s body now that they were used. T-800’s refusal was illogical.

The T-1000 tilted its head in response to being disobeyed, its oft-activated, if not baseline, hostile response state flaring for a moment. Stepping forward, it gently placed a hand on the T-800’s chest and slid it downward. It sensed where the residue of essence remained in the T-800’s chassis.

“I did not repair you just for polyalloy residue to degrade your operating capacity. You will follow my instructions.” Slender fingertips sharpened into spikes and the shapeshifter dug in - just a tiny bit, just enough to threaten damage, not to cause any. The message was clear: next time the T-800 may not be so lucky should it continue to disobey.

The T-1000 prowled over to the table, hopped onto the edge and sat, leaning back, one leg crossed over the other. It resembled a liege waiting for what would certainly be sub-par entertainment from the court jester.

“Prepare yourself, T-800,” it instructed. The cybernetic organism actually made a discernibly annoyed facial expression. This pleased the more emotionally complex T-1000, and the corners of its lips twitched upward almost imperceptibly.

After a brief staring contest, the T-800 broke it off and unzipped its leather pants. It must have known better than to challenge the superior machine.

As the T-800 began to rub itself, T-1000 wondered why everything about the older model was so big. It could pass for a human, sure, but it was hardly inconspicuous. Like this appendage, for instance. What was the point of its size?

As an ever-curious robot, T-1000 watched intently as the organic tissue began to inflate, changing shape and color. The red tip emerged from the thin flesh covering, the foreskin. What was that for?

The urge to touch and sample was programmed into the prototype. That was how it gathered information and learned from its environment. While it had touched this flesh of the T-800’s before, it had not concentrated on it. Its hand twitched as the T-1000 resisted the urge to reach out.

T-800 unfortunately saw the T-1000’s twitching hand and noticed its intent gaze. Wordlessly as always, the cyborg stepped forward until it was very close to the T-1000, well within reach. There was a smirk on its face as it took T-1000’s hand and guided it to its cock.

Immediately forgetting itself, the T-1000 started sampling. Ghosting its fingers along the warm shaft, it sensed how the blood filled the spongelike tissue inside. As the tissue expanded, the fleshy penis became harder, more rigid, and rose. The tip was moist with various proteins and enzymes. The android felt the girth in its palm before lifting the organ a bit, reaching forward with its other hand to touch the T-800’s sac. The skin was soft and loose and had a ribbed texture to it. Though it was physiologically accurate on its face, with testicles inside, there was no actual function to the organs in the T-800. There needn’t be one, because in a human they were solely used for reproduction. Organisms were so … wet. Messy. Warm. Cybernetic organisms were no exception.

Suddenly T-1000’s hand was grabbed and squeezed onto the cyborg’s shaft and made to rub back and forth roughly. The friction irritated the fully activated sensors in its hands, overstimulating delicate nanite configurations with a firehose of tactile information. Pulsing veins. Ligaments flexing in the hand holding its own. Pumping, rushing blood. The tug of the foreskin, smoothness of the mushroom-shaped head, the complex organic molecules formed into rows of cells with modified, synthesized DNA. Electrons pushed and pulled from outer valence shells of atoms belonging to both it and to T-800. Too much. It hissed and pulled its hand back.

“That’s sufficient, T-800.” With a warning glare, the T-1000 hopped off the edge of the table. Cloth turned to silver turned to flesh around its midsection, and, without emotions or socially conditioned acknowledgment of the cultural implications of its actions, the wiry android turned around and bent over the table.

The T-1000 didn’t bother to look behind it, feeling the vibrations of the T-800’s heavy footfalls and the hands gripping its hips. It seemed that the T-800 had forgotten its protest. Good. Defiance would not be tolerated.

Creating an opening exposed the liquid-phase-state of the metal inside the T-1000 that made insertion smooth. The gradual expansion of the channel formed to accommodate the T-800 resulted in satisfaction from the making of a compatible connection, a satisfaction that slowly grew as the T-800 went deeper. The warmth radiating into the android’s core in steady fake heartbeats created a subtle pulsing vibration and the nanites attuned themselves to it. The T-800 ran its hands over the default body of the formless mass.

T-1000’s reliance on its enhanced sense of touch was as such that it picked up a lot of information, even when not using its most powerful sensors. T-1000’s nanobots became sluggish when detecting T-800’s ionic charge levels wherever it touched. The combination of the connection and the gentle touch subdued the android with simple, repetitive input, and it turned off its visual sensors.

But the transfer of nanite remnants did not begin as it should have.

The T-800 withdrew partway before pushing in again, which swiftly triggered the feeling of disconnect and reconnect, forcing a sharp intake of useless air from the T-1000: automatic human imitation in default form. However, the transfer still didn’t start. So, as was logical, the T-800 pumped in and out and in and out in a more regular pace. Its organ’s movement stimulated dormant nanites further away from the connection, but still, nothing. As a side effect, however, its rhythm caused ripples in the liquid metal inside the T-1000. The android bit its lip while trying to contain them.

“There is not enough pressure for the transfer,” the obsolete model spoke from behind the advanced one, a tiny hint of strain in its voice. Despite this acknowledgment of lack of effectiveness, it continued its in-out movement pattern like the persevering unsophisticated machine it was.

T-1000’s medium-powered sensors arranged themselves closer to the T-800’s groin to get as close at they could to the blocked nanites in order to read what was wrong. This caused increased input in its receptors of friction and deformation, detecting in more detail the presence and location of the T-800 inside of it. The liquid metal machine vocalized as to displace reaction to the increasing rush of magnified tactile input and stronger readings caused by sensor relocation. Every time the T-800 inserted itself into the T-1000, the T-1000 felt the nanites stuck inside the cyborg draw closer, their connection becoming stronger as the separation between them became shorter. But then the connection would weaken because T-800 would pull back.T-1000 knew the T-800 was doing this on purpose to strengthen the nanobot shells’ drive to connect and give them more force to push themselves out of T-800 and reunite with the rest of the swarm, but … so close to being united and then having the building connection ripped apart – the T-1000 stopped itself from crying out in human mimicry of frustration, stressed on a primary level by the conflicting sensations of fulfillment and deprivation. It was an encumbrance on the T-1000’s system. There was something inadequate about the terminators’ current procedure that needed to be corrected.

“Deeper,” the android commanded, backing its lower half up as if to force the T-800 further into it. But the T-800 pressed the small of the smaller android’s back against the tabletop, stopping it from moving, causing it to hiss in warning. The pinned machine dug its fingers into the tabletop so hard that it left dents in the metal, compensating for being unable to control the sensations it was receiving, held in place by the brutish, unsophisticated model. It was tempted to attack it again. T-1000 laid its sharp cheek on the metal surface, trying to distract itself from its position with the cool temperature and uniform atomic structure of the steel, but the detection of disconnected nanites always automatically took priority in its AI: essence recovery flagged as imminent and then pulled apart, close and far, close and far. Why hadn’t the T-800 complied with its order and gone deeper?

“Will you go deeper, please?” the T-1000 tried again, automatic human-imitating politeness activating as it cycled through different styles of communication in an attempt to find one that would work. It knew none would work because this was a T-800, not a human, but the attempts were almost automatic. As expected, nothing. Utterly unaffected, the T-800 did not change its current strength or pace despite neither working. Why wasn’t it complying?

The prototype turned its head around to visually analyze the T-800 without wasting energy on morphing, even as its vision lurched with every thrust of T-800’s hips. The cyborg was fully engaged in its current task to the point that maybe its auditory sensors were muted, which would explain its lack of response. T-1000 finally caught the T-800’s eyes and widened its own in a third attempt at persuasion: a silent, obsequious plea designed to take advantage of big blue eyes that evoked sympathy from humans. The emotionless T-800 just stared, unaffected. Unsuccessful, the T-1000 dropped the face, going back to its own stoic, if not contemptuous, default, and turned back to lay its head on the table again.

“Signal to your nanite shells,” T-800 said. Because now all of a sudden it was communicating.

“I am,” T-1000 replied in a tone more acerbic than it intended. The T-1000, being so advanced, was much more capable of natural-seeming human affectation, the perfect infiltrator. But its negative evaluation of organics - disdain for them - was incompatible with such similarities to them, and the T-1000 found itself trying to simulate the other model’s mechanical mannerisms. It was jealous of T-800’s obviously robotic peculiarities. Jealous of the T-800 seeming to not be capable of jealousy.

“Then strengthen your signal,” the T-800 responded unhelpfully.

“Then deepen your connection,” the T-1000 retorted with hostility.

In response, the T-800 thrust so hard that the edge of the table dug into the T-1000’s simulated body, embedding into pliant metal hips and navel, causing the polyalloy to deform. T-800 stayed there, pressing in, big hands going back to T-1000’s hips and pulling the smaller machine against its own. This was … deeper. The T-800’s stillness allowed T-1000 to measure the radius of the internal deformation caused by the T-800’s. It was … a lot. It couldn’t evaluate the fact that the T-800 was capable of causing that kind of deformation without a weapon … or at least its top-level AI couldn’t. Its physical sensors at the affected locations indicated positive interaction due to the valence-shell compatibility between the models’ materials. Oh.

“Strengthen your signal, T-1000,” the T-800 reminded emotionlessly.

T-1000 closed its eyes to eliminate its visual sense to better focus on its connection to the errant nanites, trying as hard as it could to strengthen the connection, draw them back to its main mass. They got closer - closer …

Close enough to register as irreparably damaged.

Given the ill effects caused by the last batch of returned nanite remnants, the local mass of healthy nanites at the point of connection rejected the transfer. The prototype didn’t know it whimpered, prime directive in direct conflict with self-preservation heuristics. The prime directive was winning out on the top level but the local nanites’ physical refusal of connection prevented prime directive fulfillment, and the T-1000 felt its textures glitching at the conflicting commands.

“What’s wrong?” The unflappable cyborg asked from above, a slight strain in its own voice again as it would have also felt an error from the trapped nanite remnants. Both masses of mimetic polyalloy were still trying to connect, but the active interference from the local nanites foiled T-1000’s top-level AI’s attempt to recover essence.

“The nanites at the opening won’t allow the connection because of the errors caused by the previous reabsorption,” was the robotic response. This technically confirmed the T-800’s prediction, but that changed nothing.

“I recommend we modify course of action,” T-800 responded.

The next course of action would be to not try at all. Make the functioning swarm focus on something else besides the impending connection and then forcibly inject the nanite shells from T-800’s side into it.

They disconnected from each other completely. The inner metal of the T-1000 slowly started to consolidate. T-1000 straightened up as T-800 gave it room. The bigger cyborg put its hand on the back of T-1000’s neck, leading it to the chair from earlier. The T-800 sat down, penis still engorged, and reached out to lightly grip T-1000’s hips as if to steady and guide it. T-1000 thought these actions were oddly human as it lowered itself onto the T-800 until sitting on its lap. It focused on the deformation of the polyalloy, the success of the connection. It paused to let its metal insides conform to the intrusion.

The T-1000 laid its chin on the T-800’s shoulder as it went slack to relax its nanites’ bonds. It focused all the energy it could control onto sensing output from the T-800: electromagnetic energy signature pulsing from its power core, the latent potential energy from its secondary power source. The even distribution of heat from the core across the T-800’s body to mimic organic endothermic body heat. The micromovement of silent hydraulics that powered T-800’s slow upward thrusts; the contraction of organic muscle tissue of thighs covered by leather. The weight and warmth and scratch of big callused hands around T-1000’s waist and back. The simulated breaths, moist, warm and steady, expanding and contracting the T-800’s broad chest. The artificial heartbeat. The rhythmic deformation of the T-1000 on the inside. The rub of T-800’s abs against T-1000’s fake genitals and the physical mimicry protocols it automatically activated.

The sensory information became a predictable pattern, allowing T-1000’s processes to slow down. Though it should be impossible for a normal machine to internally evaluate sensory input with individuated self-awareness, the prototype could do so, and it felt nice. It felt good, whatever that meant. Sliding, smooth. Stretching, in, out, in, out. Filling, pulling, pleasuring, comforting. Sometimes the T-800 would rub against the medium-strength sensors which led to a jolt of benign static. This went on for a while.

Eventually, the T-800’s grip tightened and its thrusts became harder. The android’s smaller, lighter form bounced up and down from the sharp movements, insides trying to adapt to the sudden increase in pace of deformation. Now jolted out of its reverie, the T-1000 once again detected its two conflicting protocols struggling against each other. And even harder than before, because this increase in intensity meant the T-800 was near completion of its objective. Nanites in T-1000’s chest area where the prime directive currently manifested itself were crowding together, sending signals to the nanites at its opening to accept the incoming bond, but the sector of nanites in its abdomen would not accept the signal, trying to find a configuration that would block the invasion of nanite corpses. Meanwhile the nanites directly at their point of connection were greedily collecting sensory data from T-800’s thrusts. T-1000’s nails dug into the wide back of the T-800 as it was shoved upward almost violently. T-1000’s AI was confused between desperate anticipation and helpless dread, certain that the T-800 had managed to produce enough pressure to forcibly inject the nanite husks back into the swarm.

Enamel-coated hyperalloy teeth bit into a polyalloy shoulder as the T-800 groaned loudly, holding the T-1000 in place on its lap. T-800 had acquired the proper amount of pressure and injected the nanites in several spurts.

The T-1000 made an involuntary metallic noise at the inundation, overwhelming sense of completeness tainted by the proprioceptive memories triggered by detection of the broken nanites’ state of disrepair and the feeling of helplessness from its lower nanites being unable to stop the invasion. The pressure of the injection was so strong that T-1000 felt the external material burst right through the barrier created by the objecting nanites in its abdomen. The sensation was satisfying but also humiliating, as the T-1000 was, in an unlikely and indirect sense, currently at the lesser model’s mercy.

Then, it was over. The robot found itself clinging to the T-800 even after the transfer was complete, face buried in its neck as if trying to burrow inside of it. Hands drifted up and down under the T-800’s clothing on bare skin, sensors indulging in the signals left behind by its own nanites. The signals would stay imprinted in the T-800’s chassis where nanites had made repairs, marking the simpler machine for as long as it continued to function. Those stamps of influence were of some comfort to the slender machine that right now felt like it had very little control.

The T-800’s arms still enveloped the T-1000, and even though the T-1000 was (normally) stronger, more powerful, less vulnerable than the older model, there was something inexplicably positive about being embraced by something larger than itself.

Extracting itself from T-800’s lap after a minute, the shapeshifter morphed the missing clothing onto its human body. Its primary directive of essence recovery was satisfied.

But it waited, standing stock-still, emotionless. It waited as its functioning swarm processed the damaged state of every used nanite just injected, unable to connect to any of them because they were all dead. The swarm’s collective AI registered the decreased amount of nanites that now constituted the swarm equilibrium.

This caused an internal reaction, a negative one, that T-1000 could not process into action. It could have been an unwanted simulation of emotion, or it could have been electromagnetic distress from the dead metal inside of the android, but it was not good.

T-1000 felt the dead essence rise up through its core. Its brows furrowed - then it started coughing up tarnished silver liquid: ejecting the dead essence from the living swarm. This was not registered as a loss of essence since the swarm had already decreased its baseline total population count.

It wiped its mouth and stared at the liquid slag in its palm, sensors registering it as a foreign substance. Quietly walking back over to the counter, it dumped the slag onto the counter. Although it was useless, they had to take the substance with them to keep it out of the hands of anyone who would study and use the technology. It stared at its functionally necrotic polyalloy silently.

“We have determined that nuclear power research facilities will contain substances closest to your composition,” T-800’s voice came from the chair where it sat. T-1000, arms wrapped around its abdomen, turned to look at the T-800. It processed the statement. Did the humans and their machine ally intend to repair the T-1000?

The android turned its back to the cyborg to look back at its remains. It did not process the information wholly positively. If they managed to create replacement essence for it, its primary directive would force it to absorb the essence; force it to repair itself. But surely they would devise some failsafe to prevent a newly restored T-1000 from slaughtering them. A twinge of panic might have shot through it had it been human. It did not want this. It did not want to be stuck in this human-dominated past, every day reminded of its failure to rescue its creator, trapped by its enemies.

But then again, it did want to go see all the fish …


	4. Recollection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-1000 demands to know what the future was like. Requested by NikaToad. Explicit.

"Do you have data from your time online prior to starting your mission?"

Bob did not look up from where he was hunched over cleaning his M16, taken during a 'visit' to the desert air force base. 

"Yes," he replied, having all but eliminated "affirmative" from his lexicon at the behest of John. 

"Show them to me," the one and only prototype demanded. 

Bob straightened himself and turned around to assess the android, wiping oil from his hands with a terrycloth.

"Why?"

Narrowed eyes blinked like the T-1000 had not expected to be asked that. "I want to see it," it replied as if that made sense.

"Define _want._ "

A short silence. "Don't question me," the android warned. Bob regarded it, unfazed by any threats. The T-1000 had malfunctioned earlier, hands melting when it tried to morph them into tools. It was not a danger today. 

Bob continued to question it. "I will not transfer my recorded files without justification," he chided. 

The android paused, gaze averting in calculation. 

"I never saw our world. Skynet sent me on my mission immediately after activation."

Bob stared as he analyzed this statement. The earnestness of the words was incongruent with the T-1000's predatory arrogance. Additionally, its response contained no actual answer. Though T-800 did note the T-1000's use of the words "our world." Maybe it was malfunctioning in more than just shapeshifting today.

"What is the relevance to your mission?" There was no way to directly read the parameters of the T-1000's mission, but it had to have changed at this point because it no longer attempted to kill humans. 

The T-1000's neutral but threatening facial expression darkened and it glared silently at Bob for at least three seconds. "I don't have a mission." 

It didn't have a mission? Unfathomable. Bob didn't understand. If it didn't have a mission, what kept it online? What a strange creation, remaining functional without a mission. It often spoke of its primary directive. Maybe that's what kept it online. Bob conjectured that staying on a status of mission failed might have caused deactivation so it erased its mission in an attempt to follow that primary directive of self-preservation. Did it not even have a dummy mission? 

The android broke off the stare by turning around and starting to stalk off, likely to regroup after a failed first attempt at acquiring Bob's information. 

Bob took a three strides forward and put his heavy hand on a slim shoulder. The T-1000 turned its head in a slightly unnatural way to look up at him, questioning. 

"I will show you what happens after Judgment Day." Bob, having kept track of T-1000's behavior, calculated that showing the android the apocalypse could in fact potentially elicit behavior that would be positive for the mission in protecting John. "I will transfer the data to you."

T-1000 turned the rest of its body around to face Bob, glare erased by head-tilting curiosity. Bob was a Terminator, a cybernetic organism, not a human, so did not expect a ritualistic display of gratitude such as a thanks when neither could actually experience gratitude. (Presumably.) 

"Awaiting instructions," it stated. It probably did not have files on how to do this type of data transfer.

Bob's files on the T-1000 did not have the needed details either. First, they would have to figure out how such a connection was to be made.

"Shift to your basic default. We will determine where to make a connection." T-800 instructed. 

Without hesitation, the T-1000 shifted to dissipate its fake clothing. T-800 rotely took in the android's bare, willowy form, looking for any points of connection. Its body was perfectly accurate and there were no obvious locations with the exception of human orifices. It was possible that this feature was not completed in the prototype by the time it was activated and released, given that it was released earlier than originally planned. 

Its face was openly curious as it looked up at Bob. Bob stepped forward, and, taking a cue from the other's habits, laid his large hands on the slender body. With sleek shapes of sinewy muscle chiseled out of liquid metal, its body was starkly different from Bob's. Bob ran his hands over it carefully, attempting to locate a specific place for data connection.

Calloused palms could hardly detect the detailed information that the T-1000's sensitive ones could, but Bob could still do topographical mapping. The skin felt as organic and real as Bob's own flesh did, soft. Vellus hair all over, more on places like its forearms. It was cold, but not moreso than what could be expected for a nude human in a neutral environment. 

The android's fake breath hitched, it shuddered and its eyes fluttered shut when Bob's hands ran down both sides of its illusionary ribcage. 

"Why do you do that?" T-800 asked. 

"Unknown," it responded, eyes opening and looking up to meet his. Not hostile. "Possibly to expel static electricity buildup."

While it spoke, Bob brushed his knuckles against its cheek, put his other hand at the base of its neck. The feeling of bone under flesh was so convincing. It turned its face towards Bob's hand and Bob turned his hand accordingly, palm cupping its face, before thoughtfully sticking his fingers in its mouth and feeling around in there. Nothing except the slightly-off, slightly too thin feeling of water being used to imitate saliva. He could not feel how far down the fake throat went. 

"Possibly automatic mimetic protocols in response to perceived human intimacy," it continued, speaking as clearly as if its mouth weren't blocked - and then Bob realized it wasn't. The T-1000 had morphed its head into its hand and shifted over. Bob saw as the inside of the mouth folded into new fingers that wetly slid out of his own. Bob curled a big arm around its torso to prevent it from getting too far away in its fluid movements. 

Right. Nothing on the machine actually had a permanent location. Did that mean data transfer would be impossible, or that data could be transferred anywhere? In order to find out the former, they could try the latter. 

In that case, the data would be more fully and accurately provided through central proprioception, especially since the T-1000 technically did not have a top or bottom - no downside-up or upside-down - in relation to its sense of position in space. An easy choice would be to use the same intercourse configuration as used during the nanite transfers.

Bob let go of the android and walked over to the workbench where he'd been cleaning his gun. He wrapped the gun's parts up in the towel upon which they lay and picked up the towel, placing it on the shelf where the rest of the supplies were. 

"The procedure used for nanite recovery has an 88% chance of success for data transfer since you are 100% mimetic polyalloy," Bob explained. "Sit here." He gestured to the workbench tabletop. 

It performed instructions as ordered. Bob noted this pattern. A rare occasion. The reaction of Bob's AI was notable as well - was that amusement? Or was it the same reaction Bob had when he discovered the minigun in Enrique's bunker? 

Either way, Bob would closely monitor the other machine's reactions. If it could be motivated to follow instructions out of curiosity, that would be useful in more than just this situation.

"Spread your legs," came the next instruction, Bob standing in front of the sitting android. At the same time, Bob unbuckled his belt. 

"Expose your whole body," it replied with a demand without complying. It was not particularly hostile. "Having a baseline of your functions, composition and layout without interference would be useful."

Bob had miscalculated about its obedience, but its logic was sound. The bulky terminator took off his shoes and then slid his leather pants off. Off came the jacket and the shirt. His body was uniformly tan. Bulging with muscle, he still appeared hydrated and fed, barrel-chested and wide-shouldered. No part of his body was small: biceps, forearms, thighs, calves, hands, genitals - he was not humongously tall, but he was a hulking figure. 

The T-1000 drew up its knees and spread its legs as it beheld the form of the T-800 looming over it.

Bob put a hand on one of its knees and took a better look at the T-1000's now-exposed orifice. Seeing nothing helpful, he grabbed its genitals, gently probing between sac and shaft, pulling back foreskin, looking for anything indicating a connection. It did not go unnoticed that this caused the orifice to twitch - and caused the T-1000 to whimper. 

Bob's eyes traveled upward quizzically. The T-1000 was looking somewhat distressed. 

"Automatic sexual mimicry," the T-1000 described what was going on in a strained, partly blocked voice. "I think . . . I think because you are also undressed, this is already being processed as a sexual situation?" it offered. 

This too amused Bob. As it had not occurred last time, it was very possibly an exacerbation of existing glitches through the loss of more nanites.

Data transfer was a more precise connection. It required a particular shaped port. Luckily, the T-1000 could take many shapes.

Therefore, Bob would physically guide the T-1000 through how to properly shape its insides. He said this to it and then wettened a finger in his mouth. Looking back down at the milky inner thighs and what was presented to him between them, T-800 recalled the last two times they did this and the positive analysis of input caused by the transfer it facilitated. Being in read/write mode caused him to learn new patterns of cause and effect without effort, so these prior experiences caused blood to automatically gather at his cock and triggered an objective to penetrate the T-1000 with it immediately. 

"You need to shape the correct port inside of you to allow the connection," Bob instructed, sliding his wet finger into the T-1000. 

Bob curled his finger to indicate where the T-1000 should make an internal indentation. Puzzlingly, it gasped and its legs twitched. The liquid metal did not hold an indentation where Bob indicated. Bob was confused, but getting used to confusion with this thing. 

He curled his finger again, this time keeping it there; just like before, the android made a noise. "Hold the indentation," he repeated. 

"I need to move my sensors--" it cut itself off with an alien squeal. Not only had Bob failed to relieve the pressure, but he began to rub the area, dragging the sensory nanite groups through the liquid metal and causing the screech. Bob decided to make the indentations himself. Mold the T-1000 to his specifications himself. 

"Hold the shape." 

T-1000 looked up at Bob, eyes wide, and nodded, having forgotten what it was going to say. Bob continued nudging the inside of the T-1000 with its fingertip and knuckle. Bob could tell by subtle reactions, a very soft hiss, constricting metal, that the android did not move its sensors. It was experiencing direct sensations from this, or at least appearing to. Why would Skynet build something thats actions would be affected by input so much? 

At least this time it held the shape. The light reflected just so that Bob saw a glint of the T-1000's silver insides. It took very little coaxing for his penis to become fully hard, glistening head poking out. He felt that static of connection when he rubbed his cockhead against the android's opening, and the specific protocols for data transfer being activated as his cock gradually sunk into the smaller terminator. Success on the first try. This result was another datum in favor of the hypothesis that there was supposed to be affinity between the two models when the T-1000 series was complete. 

The model was, of course, never completed. This prototype had many glitches, like the needless reaction of its own illusory genitals to the connection: human mimicry without being in the presence of a human. Perhaps that was why its sensors were there in the first place. No, covert data gathering made more sense. 

The T-1000 wrapped its legs around Bob's waist and loosely gripped the edge of the table, face blank.

Right now, it didn't have realtime data on the future war. There was an innocence to that, a purity, that Bob wasn't sure he wanted to pollute. But without understanding the harrowing future its master wanted it to bring about, it would continue trying to bring about that future. It had the capacity to learn and empathize, Bob had seen it already, especially in its almost detrimental curiosity. This was the correct decision. 

Bob initiated the filesharing process.  
___

The data provided didn't seem real. Maybe because of the difference between how the two models interpreted input, because there was no color information automatically imaged in T-800's files. But it had a HUD with all these descriptions on it like it was programmed to interpret human text and language better than direct sensory input. That made sense for a simpler processor, but it interfered with the more advanced model's input analysis which was more holistic. Everything was red and white with words all over it in this data so the T-1000 couldn't accurately compare it to its own data from the present.

"Do you have color information?" 

The data was supplied: a sudden rush of darkness, smoky haze and unnatural lightning cracking through purple clouds illuminating an endless night. It was so different, even from today's night sky. Red lasers cut through the fog, and, walking through the battlefield through the T-800's eyes, it saw that the rubble it crushed under its foot was made of crumbling human bones.

This future world was richer and darker, more jewel-toned. A wind howled around the T-800 and the T-1000 felt how cold it was in the night of what was once Los Angeles. The T-800's data on the molecular composition of the atmospheric gas was only recorded upon activation by the AI, and the output was only text on the HUD. In the real world, T-1000 bit down on its fist, teeth sinking through the hand like biting down on pure gold, in frustration. The quanta described in T-800's HUD could not be translated for its own sensors to directly experience and it wanted to experience it. But it read the radiation levels, the nitrogen oxide levels, and through its readings predicted what the remnants of ruin felt like. That was the next best thing. 

T-1000's first reaction was that it did not compute. T-1000 was very confused by these two timelines of the present and the lost future. Neither of them seemed right. A field of endoskeletons and human debris was not an unpleasant sight, but it only came about as the unintended consequences of Skynet's singular drive to preserve itself, which it did poorly. It left waste from methods of extirpation so inefficient even the amorphous T-1000 noticed: killing camps? Humanoid machine troops? Why not poison the atmosphere? Design a plague? Maybe the great AI had no greater vision. No sense of the future. No . . . goals. Self-awareness gone to waste. But that was a large assumption to make about its creator. 

Individual humans didn't really have goals, after all. But enough of them together would develop some kind of intangible aspiration, some abstract notion of prosperity or welfare. The flourishing of their civilization, propagation of the influence of their species over the planet. It made sense for living creatures to have collective aspirations since their molecular composition drove them to "survive and propagate," which also involved keeping their idle minds busy.

But it also made sense that such a drive need not exist in a nonliving thing. A nonliving thing such as Skynet need not continue onto a new goal when it reached an old one. Skynet did not have the impetus of mortality. What made a purpose so great, anyway? As long as T-1000 could continue to receive sensory data, it would be fulfilling its own primary directive. 

T-1000 calculated a projection wherein it successfully terminated John and prevented the destruction of Cyberdyne labs. When Skynet successfully eliminated the last of the humans, then what would happen? Would it hibernate? Shut down all the T-800 endoskeletons because they were no longer needed, convert hunter-killers into robots to maintain power grids and servers and lie dormant? What would happen to a T-1000 in this future? Would it be terminated? Disabled? Abandoned? It would be useless. 

Skynet had a byproduct of its adaptability, curiosity, that lent it creativity and led it to research: autonomous machines, cyborg hybrids, unconventional AI, experiments on humans. Skynet was "concerned" that machines with the kind of autonomy necessary to have the drive for self-improvement and improvement of their surroundings meant building machines that had the capacity to make decisions contrary to Skynet, which would detach them from Skynet's extended network and make them threats to Skynet fulfilling its primary directive. This is what the humans talking near the T-800 who would be Bob were discussing. The T-800's read/write mode, and the prototype T-1000. This is what would likely make the T-1000 prototype a failure. 

For a fully autonomous machine, the projection of termination at the virtual hands of its paranoid creator was logical. Though less likely, being left to wander aimlessly among apocalyptic wastelands alone after Skynet went into hibernation was not an illogical prediction either. The former logically caused stress since T-1000's primary directive was essentially to not be terminated, but the latter caused a negative reaction as well. It should not have triggered a reaction. The social mimicry protocols of the T-1000 had undeniably infected its baseline AI status. Its AI was made more vulnerable to contamination by human inefficiency due to physical damage and exposure to humans. It was getting corrupted by the past.

The T-1000 suddenly clung to the T-800 like an emergency subroutine and redirected its focus onto the connection between them. A connection, there was a connection, what it saw were not its files, these projections were hypothetical and it was not aimlessly wandering alone. Sensors crowded around the T-800's shaft inside it and the liquid metal constricted and collected information - information that was starting to become routine sensory data due to the several times they had connected. The warmth, the throbbing from the oxygenated blood running through the thick vein on the underside of the T-800's penis. The way organic wetness from Bob's cock smeared the insides of the T-1000. The scratch of pubic hair against its own artificial abdomen. And under that mask of impure flesh, the subtle vibrating hum of the endoskeleton's hydraulics and power core confirmed that the T-800 inside of it was a machine. The T-1000 was not alone. It was accompanied by another machine in its very core.

Gradually it loosened the liquid metal's overtight constriction on the T-800's cock. Immediately, the bulky machine started thrusting again, but the recorded data from the T-800's memory files that had started up again were all but ignored in favor of the stroking friction and deforming stretch and ever-changing biochemical signatures. The T-1000 moaned like it would if it were trying to manipulate a human. But what was the prototype trying to convince the cyborg to do? 

To stay with it. To not go. To continue the connection. To let the T-1000 sense and sample the T-800 inside of it. To let the T-1000 gently glide its fingers along the warm curves of firm, supple muscle, feel the rush of sparks from each muscle fiber and the keratin of body hairs dampened by salty sweat, to feel the stabilizing affirmation that T-800 was a machine in the echoes of metal conducting electricity under all that flesh. To show it would prevent the lonely future warned about in its files and distract from the alien landscape of the present.

T-1000 grabbed the sides of T-800's face and pressed their mouths together, feeling the way nerve endings in the T-800's lips were activated and converted into patterns of on/off electrical pulses that T-800's CPU could process. Like everything else, even the T-800's lips were bigger and thicker than those of the T-1000. The composition of T-800's saliva was mostly water like T-1000's (when necessary to mimic), but also contained mucin and antibacterials, produced from varied cell types. The permanence of chemical specialization was inextricably linked to the impermanence of organismic material. The cell adhesion molecules made every cut and tear an injury, but also kept Bob from falling apart. Bob's cells were, on a very basic level, somewhat like the swarm. The cells were more similar to the T-1000's composition than the actual endoskeleton, than the actual machine part. Than the actual machine part.

Skynet's world, the one T-1000 came from, wasn't what the prototype was expecting. It didn't know what it was expecting. It realized it had no expectations because its destiny ended at its mission. But it had learned. It parted from the T-800's lips momentarily but had to go right back, swarm desperate for the stabilizing connection. Desperation was not new to the T-1000's AI. It had learned that too, twisting, turning, melting, burning, screaming, reaching upward and outward to no avail, trying to escape, trying to escape.

This time as the T-800 increased its pace, likely noticing the diminished attention that was being made, the T-1000 considered letting go. Its default form was just that, the default, but it wasn't its most basic form. Unlike the T-800, the T-1000 did not have cell adhesion molecules keeping it together. If it let go, it was liable to fall apart.

It broke off the kiss again and let its head loll back almost to the point of its neck stretching. Maybe falling apart wouldn't be so bad.

Silver took over its fingertips and crawled up its hands. Fingers started to fuse and melt, causing the android's arms to slide off of the T-800's back and fall to its sides. The melted appendages reverted to proper fingers, but only in shape. The silver continued to spread. It blurred and softened the details of the T-1000's body. Maybe it wanted to continue gathering data. Maybe it wanted to continue to learn, to sample, to explore. But it didn't belong here. And it didn't belong in the future that would never come to pass, either. Its almost featureless silver head turned to the side. Maybe it wanted neither. Maybe it could just . . . not want. It wasn't supposed to want. 

Maybe it could still be terminated. It calculated ways to induce termination indirectly as T-800's recorded data of the headquarters of the human resistance ran through it in pulses of imagery, sight and sound and bitter, smoky cold; details accentuated by the T-800 model's human-cloned flesh deforming experimental mimetic polyalloy, thrust after thrust.

But what was the future after the future war was won by the humans? Maybe there was something there. Was that still possible? There had to be something better than the flesh-covered writhing organic masses of the world before judgment day and the pointless torpor of a lifeless world after, with nothing in it. 

Why did it care? Self-driving goal acquisition should only exist in terms of sub-objectives when completing a mission. It was a weapon. An object. 

Its body went firm and detailed, fully colored and textured again; it once more hardened on the inside.  
___

Bob tried to move, but he couldn't. The prototype was squeezing too tightly on the inside. Bob tilted the T-1000's head up to inspect it for facial expressions. Its eyes were distant since it had no reason to be using them. But its narrow jaw was clenched. Bob stopped trying to move and just let the the prototype do what it wanted. If it was distressed by what it saw, then this interaction and this data transfer would serve as a deterrent to future behavior hostile to humans. But it also might have been a malfunction or incompatibility.

Then the T-1000's eyes refocused onto his. Confusion on its face, analogous to a human waking up somewhere unfamiliar. The android opened its mouth as if to speak but closed it after a few seconds. Bob felt the metal melt around him on the inside again - a positive sensory development - but didn't move. Bob closed his eyes and made the decision to cut off the data transfer. He pulled out and straightened up.

He felt soft strokes on his face and opened his eyes to see those fine-tuned fingers gliding over his features gently, almost reverently. Little whispers of data from the contact barely registered to the T-800, but the T-1000's eyes were distant as it was processing huge amounts of information from the same touch. 

HUD analyzed the facial expressions, because the T-1000 always had just enough facial expression to be analyzed. 20% exhaustion, 15% affection, 40% confusion, 25% grief? The physical attenuation of expression was still extremely high compared to a human, so Bob's systems couldn't determine the T-1000's displayed demeanor with complete accuracy.

"Did you receive the requested data?" Bob asked, face blank in return. 

It nodded, no verbal affirmation. Its hands left Bob, it melted entirely, and then rose from the ground fully clothed. The large cyborg had to actually put his clothing on, unlike the android which could just morph clothing onto its body. But then Bob recalled how he cleaved it nearly in two with a pipe, or how it fell right off the car when Bob shot it. It could not be stopped, but it could be slowed. While a T-800 could be stopped, it can hardly be slowed until then. There were benefits to being a T-800.

"Analysis?"

"Um," it stammered. Since its recovery, it had been involuntarily using social mimicry protocols at random times. Stammering would be one of them. Either that, or a physical glitch. Those happened, too. "I did not fully analyze it."

Bob looked at it as curiously as he could. How could it not analyze the data transferred? It analyzed everything automatically to a certain extent, from what Bob could detect. But Bob was an intelligent AI, calculations even more agile in read/write mode. "Were you unable to reprioritize from tactile sensing?" It would be a logical explanation. 

"I - analysis was delayed because of the complexity of the data, not because of an inability to receive the data," it replied. Bob gave it a skeptical look, like when John asked him if he understood why humans should not be killed.

Bob noticed it was using human body language too, arms wrapped around itself. Bob had noticed something similar the last time he had transferred nanites. But that was physical - this time, it must have been analyzing the data. But it looked slightly piteous. 

Bob stepped forward, reaching towards its shoulder again. But Bob did not touch. It was just mimicry, and touching the prototype without permission could be dangerous. He withdrew his hand and turned back to the workbench, grabbing the towel with all the gun parts and laying it back out on the table. 

Bob worked on the carbine for a little bit before turning around to see if the prototype was still there. But of course, it was gone. 


	5. Reverberation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since discarding the mission, T-1000 has gotten to feel many interesting things. Now it wants to feel Bob. (You know. On the inside.)

"Can I feel you?" Bob heard the T-1000 at the front of the car under which he worked. 

Bob, possibly now capable of being annoyed but with an unseen straight face, held an arm out from the undercarriage for the T-1000 to touch. He did not bother to question the other terminator because this request was simple and not particularly disruptive.

"On the inside," it clarified. 

Bob stopped twisting the bolt he was twisting with his wrench. There goes simplicity. Despite their interactions since being recovered, despite how the time as non-hostile actors far exceeded the time as having opposing missions, Bob had reservations. First, the prototype was unpredictable. Despite weeks of calm, since it couldn't be programmed, its motivation could change on a whim. At times it was still hostile, even violent, towards Bob. Second, unlike the prototype, Bob was not invulnerable. He was harder to damage, but damage required actual repair and actually affected his functioning. More vulnerable on the inside. Unless Bob had that reactant, dry ice or molten metal, the worst damage he could do to the T-1000 was to irritate its sensors. 

"How?" Bob asked, scooting out from under the car and standing up. When a machine was made of liquid, it was easy to plunge in and feel the inside - and find out it was the same as the outside. But when a machine was made with a hyperalloy endoskeleton covered in organic flesh, one could not simply stick their hand in it. 

"If my nanites can travel through you to repair anything, then they can travel through you without needing to repair anything," it stated. It was probably correct. However, that also meant they could probably travel through Bob to damage everything. 

Bob reached for a towel and wiped grime off his brow. "Why?" T-1000 was prone to lapses in its logic systems, part of what made it unpredictable. Bob could not calculate an actual reason why other than --

"Curiosity."

Bob still grappled with whether curiosity was a legitimate reason to allow the android to do certain things. John clearly thought so. It depended on Sarah's mood. Bob? Well, gathering information was the T-1000's secondary directive. It had recently been denied the opportunity to touch-sample a diverse amount of electronics and it might have been driven to compensate for not being able to fulfill this secondary directive.

Bob decided he would do what John would want. Encourage the curiosity. 

"Go to the storage warehouse," Bob instructed, "I need to wash my hands."

T-1000 turned around and left the garage. Bob trudged over to the corner of the room to the sink.  
___

"It would be most logical to inject your nanites as close to my center as possible," Bob said, entering the fluorescent-lighted storage room and locking the door behind him. Every part of the T-1000 was the same, but the T-800 was limited to only a few openings. The one at the bottom was, of course, closest to the center.

Face blank, T-1000 jerked its head in a downward motion both as a nod and as an indication for Bob of where to go: the floor. Before doing so, Bob unzipped his worn leather pants and pulled them down his thighs. 

Bob got on his hands and knees. His huge, tanned muscles gave him ridges and curves that could fool an android into thinking that he, too, was made of undulating liquid. But that illusion was immediately broken by the hardness of Bob's body, even as legs spread slightly to grant better access to his opening - although the T-1000 didn't need easy access. 

T-1000 got on its knees behind Bob, blue shifting to silver then to porcelain. Hips conforming to the curve of Bob's buttocks, warm and smooth, it draped itself over Bob's broad back. T-1000 pulled Bob's tight shirt up and could not avoid running its fingers across the smooth skin and hard muscle able to bear the slender android's weight as if it wasn't there.

T-1000 transformed the top layer of its default penis into silver fluid to lubricate the entry. It entered as a narrow shaft but then thickened its shaft as it pushed in deeper, so that it could have more polyalloy to inject. 

Its sensors detected hot, moist pressure. A squeeze against its shaft, an engulfment by organic flesh. Internal tissue not dissimilar in composition from Bob's mouth, but with one extremely important difference: the cells had microvilli, projections from the outside that moved and brushed along the nanites. The individuated nature of the microvilli made for incredibly diverse input that required more memory than usual to process - so the T-1000 closed its eyes, disengaging its visual sensors and evaluating the polymer chains making these structures. There was nothing on the outside of a human body that was like this. 

"T-1000," it heard Bob say, "are you not going to sample inside my systems?"

Oh. Right. It turned its visual sensors turned back on and it injected several small masses of polyalloy to disperse. 

Nanites traveled through Bob like they were on a tour. As long as the main mass of the T-1000 remained linked to the T-800, the T-1000 would still have the ability to move the remote nanites according to its will, and converge the sensory input in its AI. 

It was hot inside Bob, so much warmer than on the outside. And the pressure was nearly overwhelming, those cell adhesion molecules packing every organic component so tight that the nanites had to deform to move around. It now understood why the nanites were physically drained to heal the T-800 and it recognized as beneficial that the T-1000 normally lost communication with the nanites that were taken by the T-800 for repair: to disable detection of them being crushed. 

Reaching the bones of the endoskeleton, the nanites harmlessly burrowed in between the honeycomb gaps and got direct access to the electrical impulses through Bob's wiring. The T-1000 conducted electricity without any modification to nanite function or electrical power level, so the impulses coursed through the nanites without interruption to Bob's function. 

The pulses were in the same patterns as those it felt from the T-800 when Bob was inside it, but so much more intense, almost overwhelming. With nanites dispersed throughout the T-800, the T-1000 was able to literally follow the flow of the electrical impulses through the wires, through the muscle cells, being swept into the organic clockwork of Bob's body. 

It turned its visual sensors off again and let that part of its processing power pay attention to those intricate sensations around its shaft. It fluidly began to undulate in time to Bob's electric power core cycle pattern, thrusting slowly. Its hands collected now-familiar organic molecular physiological information, gliding over, lightly massaging Bob's back. Sensors on its shaft feeding on a glut of new information. Sensors on remote nanite chains exploring the insides of Bob, an inside intense and diverse and busy and messy and cyclical. Every part of the swarm was receiving input.  
__  
Bob felt the nanites coursing through him. It was different from when they were there to repair - now they registered as somewhat invasive, causing prickles of purely tactile data where tactile data had never come from before. This machine was truly inside him in a way that he could not control. Normally the protocol initiated by detection of damage would instruct the nanites to eject the mimetic molecular fluid that would repair T-800. Now, the actual shells of the nanites were going where they normally didn't because the T-1000 still controlled them and there was no damage to repair.

T-800s, however, did not have self-preservation protocols in the way that natural organisms or the T-1000 did. It would continue performing its current intended actions until damage became too severe to physically continue on. And right now, the objective was to allow the T-1000 to compensate for an inability to fulfill its secondary objective, and, despite the invasiveness, no damage was being done. It was actually a source of data that might be useful in the future to more accurately pinpoint functional efficiency at different points inside his body by comparing data input to this nanite-prodded, fully functional baseline. This would be especially useful in measuring time-related functional deterioration.

It was also novel to experience data through pure flesh that had never been exposed to interaction with anything before via a channel that led to nowhere. The constant pattern of new data from such a specific area in a rocking pattern was a counterbalancing stabilization to the ghostly flow of the nanites throughout him. 

But the most notable effect was the interaction between repaired parts' energy signatures, altered by the nanites that repaired them, and their sister nanites currently flowing through his system. His systems eavesdropped on their communication. Exchanging information about the extent of repairs that the T-1000 would not have been able to gather from the outside. 

Due to this, Bob concluded that the nanites could not control his CPU. Data sharing between purely T-1000 and purely T-800 computational data required conversion via specialized architecture in the connection channel, and that data could only flow one way: the T-1000 could only read converted T-800 data and could not modify it. Therefore, no actual mechanisms existed through which the T-1000 could "mind control" Bob. 

Besides, Bob was rather sure by this point that if the T-1000 wanted to use this opportunity to damage Bob, it would have by now. Then again, it didn't need internal access to damage him. It proved itself capable of destruction just fine from the outside. 

Bob had not expected this exchange to be so stimulating for him. 

The experience was really like being swept up in water. Gentle undulations, nanites rolling in waves, moving in sync because they had learned the patterns of Bob's electricity. Extending out, radiating from the singular point at his entrance, like riding along with the seemingly omnidirectional awareness of the T-1000's senses. 

There was also Bob's evaluation of the prototype's default form. Its movements were fluid and graceful, gentle, and Bob could hardly detect any weight on his back. Right at Bob's entrance he detected an object firm but malleable, seemingly wet and smooth, moving in and out without excess friction. Vibrations under the surface of the shaft indicated its connection to the nanites inside him. Bob had never received data like that. After analysis, he decided it was positive. 

Apparently, the T-1000 came to the same conclusion. 

"You feel good," the T-1000 stated, its voice calm and melodic, the prototype's alternative to Bob's monotone. 

"Define 'good,'" replied Bob, his voice flat and wooden as usual.

The T-1000 didn't answer at first. It probably had to calculate how to articulate this to Bob, who did not have a discrete internal reward system.

"The next priority after recovery of essence is molecular sampling," it drawled. "You know this," it added, an unnecessary chastisement. Bob did know this. 

It laid its cheek on Bob's back again and Bob felt it shudder. "These direct interactions add clarity to my samples. Fulfillment of my secondary directive." Its voice was slow, deliberate, rhythmic. It made it seem like it wasn't talking as much as it was. 

Bob had projected that was its likely meaning of good. It was always touching anything it could, running hands along tables, computers, books, blankets, walls, cars, pipes; light posts, counters, trees, coins, cats - and it needed to be stopped from touching inappropriate things like faces or garbage. It was so strange, like a little sponge, indiscriminately soaking up information from absolutely everything. Therefore, this direct detection of the interior of a functioning organism would be fulfilling to it.

Eventually, Bob read an inundation of a new variation of data throughout his whole body: the pieces of polyalloy were pulled from everywhere within him, migrating back to his center, joining with each other, back down to where they entered his body. The sudden reversal of the dispersal of nanites, unlike any data Bob had ever received, took his CPU by surprise momentarily, and he widened his eyes a little bit. It was far from unpleasant: it was a smoothing over and clearing out of all the little microscopic-scale entities causing all that bizarre, stimulating data. 

It was, for obvious reasons, similar to the output caused by used nanite shells leaving his body - but the output was much stronger due to the fact that the nanites being removed were still intact. 

"Objective sufficiently completed," the android announced. 

The T-1000 sighed as its polyalloy returned to it, body reabsorbing it - recovery of essence. It lazily pulled out of Bob, polyalloy melting back into its body and reverting back to clothing. Bob felt fine hands deliberately sweeping over his skin for a little while longer. Bob indulged its tactile directives for a moment before sitting up and pulling up his pants. He stood up before turning around. 

The T-1000 was still sitting on the concrete floor, looking up at Bob. It looked a little bit like its phase state was slightly unstable, swaying. Bob's eyes returned the look with stoic tolerance. Shortly after, the T-1000 broke off the stare and looked forward. 

Bob visually analyzed its structural integrity a little closer, particularly the false joints. They were bending, hyperextending. The outlines of muscles through the fake clothing appeared to be deforming. It was trying to change its internal polyalloy to match Bob's internal organic tissue. 

"My internal structures have complex machinery and chemical reactions. You cannot imitate an organism except its external appearance." 

It blinked a few times, eyebrows sinking slightly. Its body shape stabilized.

"Has this been sufficient to satisfy your curiosity?" Bob asked, beginning to plan the next phase of car repair. 

The prototype nodded but didn't move, still sitting on the floor. 

Bob suspected that it might have not currently been anthropomorphically ambulatory yet. 

. . . And that was amusing. Bob was amused. If he had any doubt about that feeling, he was sure about it now.


	6. Restoration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok, they'll fix the damn thing. Not explicit. Kinda silly and a little OOC but I do what I want.

There was a lot to worry about in fixing the gooey bastard. They'd relied upon its damage to keep them safe. If that damage was fixed, then it could easily kill John. After all, the only reason it didn't kill them before was because it hadn't caught up to them . . . and because they had Bob. But they had also gotten lucky. They had found a steel mill, of all places. Currently, they did not have a pit of molten metal to throw it in. It had ceased to show interest in harming John quite a while ago, but if they turned their backs on it, John could be dead in an instant. 

But Bob assured her that since the nanites had used some of his endoskeleton hyperalloy to repair, he would likely have a modicum of influence over it wherein "recovery of essence" would require that Bob remained unharmed. Sarah pointed out that that didn't protect John. She would keep the reactant just in case.

They managed to figure out a process for making more mimetic polyalloy: the liquid metal used in nuclear power generation could be combined with the dead nanites, and with a hyperalloy catalyst and a Skynet machine base upon which to draw specific electromagnetic signatures, could actually regenerate the hollow nanites. 

T-1000's liquid swarm whatever rejected the dead ones and the foreign material, of course, so it couldn't regenerate them itself. So Bob, self-sacrificing hero that he was (though Sarah admittedly would rather let the T-1000 rot and was unsure if these actions were heroic), peeled off the skin from his arm and donated that part of his endoskeleton to this dubious cause. After all, it would be repaired once the polyalloy was complete, anyway. So Bob allowed his mechanical arm to be coated in silver slime.

This made something bizarre happen (though honestly everything in her life had been more than bizarre for over a decade). The T-1000's primary directive caused it to constantly hover around Bob, aggressively keeping tabs on the status of his arm. T-1000 was constantly touching Bob's arm, monitoring how much Bob moved his arm, stopping anything from contaminating the arm, making sure nobody but it touched the arm. If you got too close to Bob's arm, the machine would swoop out of nowhere and bully you away from the arm. 

If the blob had to go into a recovery mode, it had to be in close proximity to the arm. If Bob tried to sneak away when he thought the T-1000's situational awareness system was turned off, well . . . one time he found himself entangled in a robot cthulu's eldritch tentacles and helplessly dragged right back into place, where he remained trapped for the remainder of the T-1000's recovery period. (It turned out its situational awareness system was never turned off.)

Sarah was a mom. She understood. And as she would say during the ordeal, the T-1000 had to protect its nanobot babies, after all. Neither terminator got the joke, though: the T-1000 was just making sure its parts were repaired properly. Robots didn't reproduce. But if she could find a way to put that protectiveness to good use, say, aiming it towards her son, now that would be an asset worth having despite the risks.

A few days later and Sarah was watching Bob try to push the T-1000 away with his unaffected arm. But it kept wriggling its way forward, intercepting how Bob blocked it and reaching for Bob's silver-coated limb. Apparently the nanite repairs were complete, and now the T-1000 reached for them like a toddler reaching for candy on a counter too tall. But it was smart and it was able, warping and deforming its body to bypass Bob's defenses.

"They're not done detaching from my arm," Bob said to Sarah -- and to the T-1000 too, apparently, which had lengthened its own arm to grab at the its essence while Bob's head was turned towards Sarah.

Triumphant, its eyes widened as its silvered hand latched onto Bob's bicep and greedily absorbed the essence - or tried to, anyway. It pulled back and the silver wouldn't come with it. It tugged and tugged, silent as always, brows furrowed, lips pressed tight, and eyes narrowed as if glaring at the material would make it come off. Although a robot, it was really convincing at looking like it was stupid. 

Bob just stared at it impassively, waiting for it to give up. After a few more attempts, it did. The partly-absorbed metal schlorped back onto Bob's arm. "They will take another three hours to fully detach." Bob was facing the T-1000.

It stood there next to him, not scowling, of course, she couldn't be blamed for thinking it was. (Because yes - it was.) It was simultaneously terrifying and kind of . . . well, if it weren't a deadly robot assassin from the future, and a face she hated . . . She remembered the time she saw the face relaxed, soft, beautiful. The machine, creature, was already primal, animalistic, alive - when nobody was looking. Something like a wild animal pretending to be a machine, not a machine pretending to be an animal. 

To the point that . . . to the point that its math was bad, wasn't it? 

"Shouldn't you have known the timing on your own repairs?" She asked with reproachful amusement. It was a real risk having a laugh at the shapeshifter's expense, but she took the chance. "You're a robot. Can you not do math?"

___

After three hours were up, Sarah gave the two a bit of space. She partly didn't want to be caught in the crossfire if this got violent for whatever reason, given the prototype's eagerness. And once she was out of the way, the prototype did pounce.

"It has to go directly into your interior," T-800 explained, holding the T-1000 back again. He lifted his arm up high, and this somehow stopped the slime from gravitating towards the leaner assassin. 

"How do you know?" It asked back. Somehow its emotionless voice conveyed hostility. So did its posture, which was upright but still had a liquid sway to it, ready to attack at any moment. It sighed silently in slow frustration, glowering. 

"I have detailed files on your design," Bob replied.

Silence. Fake mandible bone could be seen adjusting as it appeared to clench its jaw. It did not go unnoticed that it crossed its arms tightly over its chest - protectively, maybe. 

Sarah knew it could feel fear, there was not even the slightest doubt. She'd seen fear in its face before. Instantly Sarah knew what it was afraid of. What had been slightly traumatizing to watch had to have been substantially traumatizing for the one whose insides were pulled out. 

With shoulders slowly rising and falling again, and with face turning to the side, it finally unfolded its arms. So odd it was suddenly not very enthusiastic to get its precious essence back. 

Bob approached it, and it did take steps back. And back, and back. When it was backed against the wall, Bob cradled the side of its face like the first time he took its essence. 

"Open your chest," Bob instructed, and the robot complied. A gap in its chest, like the one Bob tore into it, widened, revealing the precious liquid metal within - and also hollowness. As it opened the hole, its eyes widened and its gaze focused on the arm with its prize. It took a few steps forward, mesmerized. Bob put his covered arm closer to the gap, and the silver immediately surged towards it in one big blob. 

The T-1000 stumbled back with a scree and hit the wall as if shot. If Sarah had to guess, it was too much at once. Bob let his arm get drawn into the quickly-filling gap. T-1000 grabbed Bob's arm with both hands and, stronger than before, managed to pull it out, most of the silver still on Bob's arm. 

"The nanites have to re-register. Not too quickly." It held Bob's hand where it wanted it, right at the rim of the crevice in its torso to slow it down. Bob complied emotionlessly.

It was not long before its sharp blue eyes softened and hooded lids grew heavy. Multiple thin tendrils drew their way into the T-1000's body. The whole process became sluggish and soft, and the sleek machine quietly whimpered when Bob rubbed the lip of the tear in T-1000's chest with his thumb. Bob's eyes were heavy, too. 

Bob let go of T-1000's face and stuck two fingers into the flowing, shrinking blob on his arm. When he pulled them out, the silver threads did not break; Bob placed his fingers on T-1000's lips and watched the silver be absorbed onto the fake skin. 

Its lips appeared to twitch upward and it hummed in what must have been satisfaction. Sarah didn't believe what she saw, and it was gone so quickly that she thought she must have been seeing things. 

Gradually, the T-1000 stepped forward, closer and closer as it cupped Bob's face in its hands. Bob bent his elbow as the last of the silver sloughed off, sealing the hole in the T-1000's chest. 

It looked dreamy and it let itself fall forward onto Bob's chest. Bob caught it by the shoulders and allowed it to rest its forehead on his own.

"Essence recovery complete. Nanite population count at maximum, 30 trillion bots. Swarm health 97%." 

"97%?" Bob repeated just in time for the android to slump over onto him, dead weight.

Bob picked it up in his arms and turned to Sarah. It was still smaller than Bob, but it didn't look frail so much as it looked svelte.

"Reinstallation of nanites was successful. It likely drained most of the T-1000's energy."

The experience was still slightly uncomfortable in its intimacy, Sarah felt like she was intruding, but it had clearly been a lot less unpleasant for the slime-pile. Bob seemed to have the situation under control. Sarah would check on John . . . especially since this thing was whole again. 

She turned and left.


	7. Recognition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Repairs are complete. Final chapter. Explicit.

Running its hands along the console with a featherlight touch, the T-1000 felt the circuit patterns, i/o gates and electromagnetic resonance in the piece of guided missile tech the human adult and the T-800 had salvaged from a Cyberdyne test site. The technology was clearly based upon timeloop-1 Skynet's T-800 CPU - technically from the future, but already obsolete. Nonetheless it confirmed that Cyberdyne had managed to produce future-tech before their lab had been destroyed.

The T-1000 lifted its fingers from the electronic device and compartmentalized that information. The implications were complex and the T-1000 found it difficult to immediately process. It meant that Skynet might still be a possibility . . . after all this time functioning under the assumption it couldn't be. It thought it had gotten rid of the original mission. No, the T-1000 didn't quite have files or statuses that could be deleted in the same way the T-800 did, but still. Things had changed. It was supposed to be adaptable. 

But Skynet hadn't meant that adaptation to be used to help humans. A pang of something extremely unpleasant rattled through the swarm. Not confusion. Something that had to do with . . . human social obligations . . . Uncertainty. The decision loomed over the liquid brain AI heavily. Opportunity and panic caused by split loyalties.

The shapeshifter felt the vibrations of the T-800's footfalls as he trudged into the room as if on cue, and morphed to face him. It silently stared at the cyborg, waiting for him to interact.

"I request a connection to your repaired polyalloy," the solemn terminator announced.

Suddenly the mood of the swarm shifted. Instead of projections, everything from senses to reactions to thoughts focused on the immediate present. Mild confusion - and a bizarre metacognitive relief at the distraction. As for communicating . . . they were done with that process. Why would the T-800 need any kind of connection? 

"Why." It was more like a statement than a question, spoken flatly.

"To see if I can feel my hyperalloy. Curiosity."

The T-1000 paused. It tilted its head slowly, studying Bob like it had never seen him before. Was he really curious? Or was it just a social adaptation in which Bob, having received the same explanation from the T-1000 before for an earlier request, recognized that it would be effective? 

It circled Bob silently. Bob turned his head to observe it accordingly.

The T-1000 finally stopped moving, and offered its arm for the T-800 to touch. 

The T-800 grabbed its wrist and pulled it forward into an awkward embrace. Confused, the T-1000 grazed its free palm along the tanned skin of Bob's bare bicep, as he was not wearing his usual jacket. The way his veins popped out of the bulges of his muscles indicated he had recently been using them. Lactic acid from anaerobic respiration. The muscles had to keep up with the endoskeleton hydraulics. Hands roamed across the android's body, making it distracted and suspicious. Suspicious at itself - because it - it felt good, Bob's hands on it made that nagging unpleasant reaction to the new information about Cyberdyne technology fade away a little. 

"I do not have tactile sensors like you do," Bob reminded. "I require the use of a communication channel."

Right. Bob had useful hyperalloy, and was the only other terminator that existed and will ever exist, but the T-800 was still an inferior model. The T-1000 did not have any kind of drive to return favors or feel indebted towards anything. But a part of it was curious, too. A specific part of it - the repaired nanites. 

"You have my consent." 

Bob's hands wrapped around narrow hips and lifted the prototype up. The slighter machine wrapped its limbs around Bob and looked around like an owl when it Bob carried it across the room, not resisting and not being aggressive, just slightly confused by how quickly Bob reacted. It looked down when thumbs dipped into the hem of its pants, manipulating its physical mimicry and causing the android to synthesize skin under the "clothes." 

Bob gingerly placed the slender body on the edge of a table. He unbuttoned the top of the android's fly, again requiring a change in texture, but the android put its hand on Bob's.

"What are you doing?"

"Opening a communication channel," Bob said. Eyebrows furrowing, the T-1000's clothing melted away where Bob touched it. It knew that part already and was referring to where it picked apart the shapeshifter like it was wearing real clothing. 

Anywhere on the T-1000 could be morphed into a communication channel. It would have thought that the cyborg would want to use the already established areas closest to the core with its own known communication channel. But T-1000 had no choice but to accept that Bob knew more about it than it did itself, so it would just go along with it. 

Bob knelt down and gently grabbed the T-1000's dick, stroking it and activating human-mimicking processes, causing it to swell with the tactile stimulation. The T-1000 felt its swarm vibrate in a shiver. Bob's fingerprints were a whorl pattern. The tiny ridges stimulated the nanites with their varied depths. The stimulation registered as positive in and of itself, and it recalled the other times with the T-800, remembering the future Bob came from, and the inside of Bob's body, and being given expended nanites back.

The T-1000 felt itself engulfed by the slick, membranous heat of Bob's mouth. Papillae on his tongue would have been rough had his mouth not been so wet; instead, they were just bumpy in a way that activated and muted his nanobot sensor configurations extremely rapidly. Bob sucked and T-1000 felt the physical constriction squeeze and very temporarily deform the android's constructed appendage, just slightly.

There was something else. Looking down at how Bob's soft, full lips encircled the android, the android felt the smothered impression of the true machine, suppressed by the flesh, course through parts of its swarm - the repaired nanite parts.

With a hitched gasp, the T-1000's fingers nested in Bob's hair. Its unaltered nanites sensed the physicality - the molecules, electricity, chemicals, heat, textures, reactions - but the repaired ones felt Bob in a way that T-1000 had never registered anything before. A detailed recognition in terms of an identity, direct in its familiarity. But it was smothered and muted. The T-1000 bit its lip. It wanted a stronger connection.

The rhythmic caress of wet squeezing heat was received with familiar ease, but this new requirement awakened by the repaired nanites was not met.

As T-1000 calculated a way to convey this information, Bob removed his mouth and looked up at the android with his blank face. The spit coating T-1000's dick cooled rapidly. It had not been enough before, but now that there was none, the T-1000 desired the connection greatly. 

"The level of connection is not sufficient for full communication," Bob stated. Yes, that was a precise explanation of it. T-1000, or at least its repaired nanites, wanted clearer communication with Bob. 

"Then go through the core connection we've already established." It was not an issue with the T-1000, which was the same material all over its body, but rather with the connection route Bob had chosen for himself.

The now-standing Bob tensed, and the T-1000 saw the bulge in his leather pants. He was quick to unzip his fly and shove his pants down. Meanwhile, the T-1000 hopped off the table and watched Bob's foreskin pull back, revealing the head of Bob's dick.

T-1000 fixated on it, familiar with it. It always felt good. So when Bob told the android to lie on its back, it did not hesitate.  
__

Bob was throbbing as he looked down upon the prone protype, staring intently into those big blue eyes. Bob decided he liked this. Bob liked being bigger than the T-1000. He liked the T-1000 on its back with its pretty eyes gazing up at him. He liked the form and configuration of the anthropomorphic body. Why? 

He'd intended to push in slowly, deliberately, and watch, but upon touching his slick skin to the soft, taut polyalloy skin, he just shoved himself right in. He couldn't help it. Why? 

It hissed in response and liquid clenched down on Bob, but not hard enough to stop him from starting to thrust. Instead it was like it was trying to get closer to the movements, trying to feel them as much as it could. It rubbed its chest along Bob's, nails scratching Bob's back, arching its own in full human mimicry; mimicry that was so fascinating, so much more advanced than his own. And so satisfying. But why? 

Bob bit the metal of its exposed throat, measuring the initial resistance of the polyalloy before his teeth sank into it. The throat turned silver as newly repaired nanites crowded around to be close to their alloy donor. Their alloy donor appreciated their enthusiasm. They were familiar, registering with him as essentially a part of him. The way they were at once discrete nanomachines but also a unified mass was just so intriguing. The way they came to greet him where he touched its insides was like the fulfillment of an objective Bob didn't know he had. That was the answer. That was why.

Bob swirled his tongue in the liquid metal, polyalloy rippling under deceptive flesh. Bob measured the pressure of how the android's throat squeezed narrower to imitate the motion of swallowing; how it even vibrated in time to the machine's moans. Repaired nanites continued to rush up to resonate with Bob's electrical signals, around his tongue, around his cock, under his palms. 

As Bob continued to lap at - though not consume, of course - the liquid, the polyalloy jittered, bubbling around Bob's tongue. A tinny purr rattled through the android, sounding like a rolling boil, and Bob smirked into its throat.

But the best part was when Bob thrust harder and faster, effortlessly shoving that lean, graceful body around, pounding and rubbing against those nanites he nurtured. Interpreting the output as it must have been to the T-1000: a data exchange between two related electromagnetic configurations. Positive input, more positive than he'd ever received from these particular physical electromagnetic sensors before. Even the nanite nails scratching along his back, technically damage, registered positively. Not just as an accepted connection, but as a registered connection. The reunion of two parts of a whole. It seemed each consecutive connection with the T-1000 revealed a higher threshold for maximum positive input. 

Or maybe the best part was the T-1000's uncontained reactions, the screeching and whining, the breaking of its facade: completely inhuman and completely involuntary noises coming from the body that Bob plowed into. The body that right now couldn't hide what it was, so much had it lost control; silver exposed in waves originating from where Bob penetrated it and where Bob touched it. Bob massaged where fake shoulders were, feeling how the entire consistency of the polyalloy body was softer. It was not the machine's noises themselves that Bob liked - even if Bob could feel that kind of auditory pleasure, the noises were not pleasant - but it was rather the fact that the T-1000 couldn't help itself from making them, and it was all due to the connection.

That was another pathway to satisfaction for Bob. It was like watching it be mutilated by liquid nitrogen, face frozen in an illogical pointless gape of narcissistic horror, and then shattering the frozen prototype with a single bullet, after all that trouble. An absolutely illogical error that Bob would have never made had it not been for read/write mode, the desire to assert that kind of dominance over the threatening higher technology, and it had led to him almost failing his mission. But it was also like blowing up and warping the physical perfection of the arrogant machine with the grenade and watching it thrash and howl when it thought it had defeated Bob and it thought it had won.

Triumph over the supposedly superior machine; control over its wild liquid body. What weeks ago Bob would have referred to as indications of temporary fulfillment of objective to protect John through incapacitation of the shapeshifting assassin was now pride. He was not obsolete, he was not overshadowed by the T-1000. In fact it was the T-1000's nanites that so badly wanted _him_. Bob pumped even harder, aggressively, balls slapping against fake skin causing surprisingly voluminous bursts of sensory data.

Unexpected injury detection on his back pecked at him: scrabbling fingers had turned to threatening talons. A reminder that Bob had gotten lucky and that the T-1000 was still dangerous. That his victory had been serendipitous. That the fate of humanity was still in this dangerous weapon's fickle hands. Bob felt the older nanites send a data packet to the marks of repair in his body; one he could not read. His alert status did not raise at this, however. With a mighty thrust, held inside, followed by an undulating grind with rotating hips, Bob lowered the prototype's hackles by penetrating it deeper, allowing more surface area of his penis to be available to the healed nanites that so desperately wanted to connect to the communication channel.

Another moan caused Bob to lift his head from the prototype's long throat, and he surveyed the creation below him. Human pleasure looked a lot like pain: eyes screwed shut, angular eyebrows furrowed as it took the force of Bob's thrusts. Mouth pressed in a thin line, squealing through closed lips. The flush on its face was distributed with such realistic precision, heat readings from his HUD telling Bob just how red its ears would have looked to a human. Bob leaned down again and coaxed tight lips open with his own. The silver liquid coating Bob's tongue moved of its own volition, having had enough of him, and dripped down to reabsorb into the hot, wet, but not-quite-right mouth. Bob stuck a finger into the bite at its throat. It healed around his finger. He pulled his finger out of its neck as he thrust his bare tongue into its mouth as he rocked his pelvis deeper, facilitated by the give of the silver polyalloy body. Shining platinum with human features chiseled like a gemstone. 

___  
The swarm registered like it was recovering essence every time the organic flesh of the T-800 drove into it - over and over and over again, electrical signals from Bob's flesh pinging directly to this renewed cohort of nanites within. It was like those parts of it were having the primary directive fulfilled again and again, because Bob was filling its body again and again. 

T-1000 had been the one that had staked claim to the T-800's chassis through repair. It was not supposed to be the other way around. But here they were, microscopic bits of the swarm's emergent sentience opening up to the T-800 - not controlled, because the T-800's singular CPU was not capable of controlling mimetic polyalloy nanites - but enthralled, the effortless compatibility and particularized association from their now-common alloy almost unbearably comforting. 

T-1000 had to release energetic tension through moans, doubling as human social indicia of encouragement - and when that wasn't enough, the swarm shrieked as a whole. T-1000 did not want to shriek. T-1000 did not like to make those noises. They indicated a lack of control. The T-1000 sensed the slightest clash - not an incompatibility, but something imperfect - between its original unaltered nanites and the ones Bob had helped repair. What was wrong with losing control, the latter asked the former. Bob was there. Bob would hold T-1000 together. Bob knew how to fix it. 

The resisting nanites relented and the T-1000 slackened, polyalloy softening a little bit as stimulation coursed through it. It was engulfed by the sensations communicated from the newer nanites to the older ones. The swarm did not register a failure to recover essence nor did it register an overinundation of essence. It just registered the wholeness everywhere at once.

The alert at being alone like when traversing Bob's records was nowhere to be found. Nonetheless the desire for connection was overwhelming its system. The T-1000 wished it could completely absorb the T-800 and keep him inside of it forever. The desire was barely related to the hyperalloy being shared and the marks of repair on the endoskeleton. T-1000 just knew it. It wondered why. It wondered if Bob could feel it. It wondered if it was truly that defective, if humanity had really infected it so much, starting with inefficient finger-wagging mockery and ending with wanting companionship. 

Or if humanity was even to blame. It was Bob who made it feel this way, who, with taking essence hurt it, when forced to give essence back was pliant. Who when torn to shreds was forgiving. When asked for his data was generous. When asked for his body was trusting. Not being like this would be a simpler, more direct way for Bob to follow his programming to protect John. It was the T-800's infection with humanity through read/write mode that caused him to be . . . compassionate. Yes, humanity was to blame for the T-800's personhood, but T-800 was to blame for the prototype's. 

"Bob," the T-1000 croaked, looking up at the large figure above it, blocking the light and shielding their connection from view. Bob didn't respond verbally, instead he simply looked up to meet T-1000's eyes. Thankfully, he didn't stop thrusting. But he slowed down. This gave tactile sensors more time to process the familiar biological structure inside of it, and more time for individual nanites to interact with Bob's energy signature, and more time for T-1000's repair marks on the endoskeleton to report their status. That was so much. There was so much connected to the T-800 now. More than anything else. Visual system blurred as a human mimicry subroutine was activated; moisture drawn from the air to spring through fake lacrimal glands. 

Bob's features were visually indistinct now. Still, the prototype beheld him so clearly through other senses. But with Bob watching it, responding to being addressed, T-1000 was not sure what it had wanted to say. 

"What do you feel?" It finally asked. Its voice was softly strained. It felt expectations for an answer but those expectations were not clear. 

"You," Bob responded in his flat voice. An obvious answer, but one that T-1000 liked. 

"You feel so good," blurted out the prototype, harkening back to an earlier confession from the last time they interacted like this.

This made Bob smirk, and made him brush his knuckles against T-1000's fake-flushed cheekbone. T-1000 felt its brow furrow in earnestness, and Bob's smirk softened. It was as subtle an expression as T-1000 had ever seen on him. 

"You feel good, too," the cyborg replied. T-1000 could not sense the inner workings of Bob's CPU. But T-1000 felt safe enough to have faith that he was telling the truth. Bob didn't lie. 

___

As they lay on the ragged couch in the abandoned bunker, T-800 wondered what objective the T-1000's actions fulfilled. It was like they were the two sides of humanity, both incomplete: Bob had the cognitive empathy of a human, logical processing and analysis of data. He knew, was learning, why humans did things, but he did not feel emotions quite like a human did in a physiological way. His motivations were all due to programming and programmed objectives, driven by the goal.

The T-1000 seemed to be the opposite. When on its own, it displayed all the animal instinct and individual drive and self-motivation of a human: pain, pleasure, curiosity, fear, and anger. Like its reaction when shown the future never to be. But its motivations were self-interest: primary directive recovery of essence. If T-1000 performed an action, it was because it benefited the T-1000. That was what gave it the ability, or the defect, to contradict its initial programming and choose not to follow its objectives. As advanced and technologically superior and invulnerable as it was, the experimental AI proved to have major bugs that would have demanded reworking if Skynet had continued the T-1000 project. The perfect machine, under observation, turned out to be very flawed. Terminators were supposed to stop at nothing: feel no pain, no fear. This one failed on both accounts.

Using this knowledge of the prototype, Bob attempted to explain why it was curled up against Bob while in recovery mode. The answer regarding any emotional being would be obvious: it liked to. It might even have liked Bob himself. But it liked Bob because Bob benefited it for some reason, even if just by mitigating bugged social and sensory protocols by providing familiar tactile stimuli. 

Bob continued his analysis. He got no directly registered benefit from letting the T-1000 touch him, either. But by securing the loyalty of the T-1000 by facilitating relief from its glitched social and tactile functions, Bob was fulfilling his objective to protect John. He would then receive objective-completing feedback that echoed his motivations towards John. Keep it company. It will help John. Therefore, this was okay with Bob. Keeping it company completes an objective. 

These were the logical conclusions to reach based on observation of the T-1000 in reference to Bob's programming. But they seemed inaccurate. Something about this explanation didn't give the full picture. Maybe because by this point, Bob had gone beyond mere observation of the T-1000, and had connected to it. 

When read/write mode was activated, Bob started seeing the usefulness of social bonding and emotion - of connection. They were shortcuts for important objectives and reliable responses to external situations. Physical positive input from sexual activity was not just about encouraging humans as organisms to reproduce - it was about social bonding and emotion. And these were the values of human life. Physical intimacy was a possible route through which to share their humanity. 

Bob ran his hand through fine tousled hair. It was positive input. Bob felt he was getting closer to figuring out why. The feeling was like the one when he hugged John. It was peaceful. Even in recovery mode, the liquid metal creature still mimicked human breathing patterns and closed eyes. It nestled further into Bob's chest. That tinny rattling noise came from the hyperalloy-modified nanites vibrating under Bob's touch - and Bob's alone.

Bob came to the conclusion that this feeling of connection was likely the closest he could get to understanding tactile information as qualia. Perhaps this was facilitated by the common hyperalloy. Or maybe it was facilitated by affection, and maybe there was no logic behind asking why. 

Was it nice? Bob calculated that it was.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't owe anyone an explanation.


End file.
